


Með Jötnum

by onnenlintu



Category: Stand Still Stay Silent
Genre: "Kasvatus-verse" works, Gen, I guess I should start a coherent tag for fics set in that timeline?, Kasvatus-verse, Murder Most Foul, Scandi Crime Drama
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-20
Updated: 2018-10-21
Packaged: 2019-07-08 15:21:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 22,750
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15933152
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/onnenlintu/pseuds/onnenlintu
Summary: It's been two years since the Known World burst open to the east, forcing every map to be redrawn and every nation to reconsider the place they hold. A summit in Reyjkavik will be a landmark event in negotiating the Nordic nations' relationship with their new neighbours, and Mikkel finds himself in a side role as assistant to the Russian ambassador's young translator. Despite his proximity to important events, he's sure his personal main challenge will be having to herd a 19-year-old around again. However, even in a land free of trolls, it's possible to make big enemies. Set after the events of Kuu saa valtansa auringolta, overlaps very briefly with the events of Puolikas Ihminen.





	1. Chapter 1

  
  
When Mikkel had first learned Icelandic, he had found it rather interesting and endearing that they had a word - _gluggaveður_ \- specifically to denote the sort of weather which was only pleasant to watch when one was on the indoor side of a window. When in Reykjavik in December, it was much less endearing, because that was when you discovered most easily why the Icelandic language required so many words for terrible weather. Shards of ice rained down at an angle that seemed almost deliberately contrived to find the cracks between his scarf and hat, sharp and fast enough to sting his face where it landed. Reykjavik’s dull, blocky buildings gleamed faintly where the rime, ice and snow coated them, catching the glow of the street lights that had today been turned on barely after they'd had lunch. Tine stuck close by him, using him as a makeshift shield against the horizontal wind, and shouted over the noise behind her as another stinging gust rattled the shop signs.  
  
  
  
“You should really try to speak Icelandic to him.” Mikkel did not have a problem, exactly, with Tine addressing the Russian ambassador in his own language. He did suspect, though, that Vasiliy would speak rather smoother Icelandic by now if Tine was not always so eager to do so.  
  
“Well, we get to speak Danish to each other, and I’m only telling him to catch up - eek!” Tine pulled her hat further down on her head as the wind threatened to take it, and when Vasiliy appeared from wherever he’d gone missing this time, the strings of his own hat’s earflaps were tied firmly under his chin.  
  
  
  
Moments like this made Mikkel oddly nostalgic. Lalli was a unique enough character that Mikkel would probably never work with quite the likes of him again, but he’d gleaned that before falling into this job the young Russian had also been some kind of scout. The fact a scout’s tendencies, namely that of disappearing off whenever something was worth investigating, still had such fond connotations was probably a large reason why Mikkel hadn’t yet become annoyed by them.  
  
“Ooh, and we almost passed it!” Tine dodged around Mikkel, her direction of travel drawing Mikkel’s gaze to the door of a shop. Mikkel watched Vasiliy followed her, then finally squeezed himself through the narrow door himself. The way the wind’s sound died off as the door shut behind him made everything feel suddenly very quiet, and the muted slap of ice against its glass panels was indeed immediately more pleasant to watch and listen to.  
  
Mikkel was rather keen for this excursion to be over as soon as possible. So far, his role as Tine’s “general assistant” had been relatively stress free. When someone had needed to be assigned the role of picking up after her lack of life experience, he’d been quite ambivalent about taking it, but he had to admit it was slightly more interesting than continuing to knock about on the farm. When the worldwide shock of Russian being a useful language again had brought her into the limelight, she had risen to the occasion of her sudden indispensibleness with more grace than he would have relied on in someone that young. He’d dealt with far more chaotic nineteen-year-olds before, and she hadn’t even been a total stranger. Remembering how small she’d been when she had made her trips to knock on his family’s door, asking for permission to look for “clues” from the old-world occupation she was obsessed with, made Mikkel feel a little too keenly aware of the way time passed these days.  
  
Being aware of time passing was one thing, and being made to feel actually old and out of touch was another. Taking Tine to get some more respectable clothes to wear for her meetings with every important person in the Known World was leading inevitably towards the latter thing. Mikkel had a very good idea of what the organisers had pictured when they’d asked him to take her to do this. Of course, there were certain truths about the interactions men of nearly forty had with girls of nineteen, and one of them was that his opinions on her dress sense were to be discarded before they even left his mouth. He hoped nobody would blame him when she inevitably turned up in something he could not have even predicted someone wanting to wear.  
  
At least her taste tended towards the more tasteful side when she took the lead in holding up bits of fabric against Vasiliy, once again slipping into speaking Russian to him as she led him about, clearly in possession of far stronger opinions about his new jacket than he was. Mikkel couldn’t help be entertained by the look on Vasiliy’s face. While he too was doing remarkably well in the surprising role he’d fallen into in life, he continued to look a little lost in any context that required leaving his backpack and gun at home.  
  
“Oh! You should have rung the bell!” From a door behind the counter, a woman appeared, small with piles of straight black hair in a loose bun. Mikkel nodded at her as she appraised the scene. “Shopping for curtain fabric?”  
  
“I thought this would make a nice skirt, actually.” Tine held up the garish fruit-print roll, feeling the thickness of it. “Oh, no. This is probably too thin.”  
  
“We’re shopping for clothes for a _trade summit_.” Mikkel addressed the shopkeeper directly, hoping his emphasis would lead her into backing him up when he had to gently suggest something other than the oranges and lemons on a bright pink background.  
  
“The Yule Summit, next week?” The shopkeeper sounded like her interest had been piqued by meeting someone attending such an event, but moved straight on. “Yes, much too thin for the winter. The heavier stuff, all kinds of woven wool, is on the right.” She caught Mikkel’s eye as Tine put her roll back, seeming to gather that the two of them were in the same boat of being someone’s assistant today.  
  
Mikkel did take mental notes while he watched Tine and the shopkeeper go through the possible fabrics, sure that the apparent fixation on eye-searing prints would be useful to know about next time he was buying a gift for one of his younger sisters or cousins. The shopkeeper seemed to know what she was doing, guiding Tine away from the more unnatural shades of yellow and orange with a sympathetic-sounding “Ah, but you’re so fair, it’ll wash you right out! Look, it almost drowns even me!”, rather than a reminder that some member of the fishing board might mistake her for a new kind of lure rather than a delegate. Tine was finally talked down to a fabric that Mikkel suspected would still be considered unprofessional, but at least featured colours that occurred in nature. Happily placing down slightly more kronar than Mikkel had expected, Tine purchased enough of the daisy-print green tweed for “lots of pleats and absolutely _huge_ pockets”, and the shopkeeper finally called over a bored-looking Vasiliy to measure him for a jacket.  
  
Vasiliy was not a fan of the idea of being given a flat-cap instead of his ushanka, nor of spending any part of the winter in a coat with no fur on it, but accepted being smartened up. When they finally finished describing their orders and left the shop, Mikkel was once again struck by the time-warping effect that the winter had this far north. It had been almost completely dark when they entered the shop, and it being pitch black but for the streetlamps now made him feel like it must be close to dinner time. Checking his watch, though, he found there were hours yet before they had to return to their lodgings.  
  
“Do you really want to stay out when it’s like this?” Mikkel hoped Tine would be having a bad enough time with the Atlantic winds to be put off her plan of going to look at the Academy, but there was no deterring her. The three of them made their way through the streets of Reykjavik, attracting occasional double-takes as the sound of Vasiliy and Tine conversing caught the ears of passerby. Despite how famous their faces had become two years prior, less news-savvy Icelanders had been routinely mistaking the two of them for Finns, having no other guess as to what such foreign-sounding babbling could be. Vasiliy’s status as someone who had required all maps of the Known World to be redrawn certainly made him an object of fascination for those who did recognise him, although nobody had yet been rude enough to actually approach.  
  
“It’s so weird.” When they reached the Academy of Seiðr, Tine spent a long time just gazing at the snow-dusted, under-lit image of Freya that graced the entrance. “That they have such a huge building dedicated to this, I mean. I wonder how they decide what counts as “magic” and what doesn’t, you know? They use it in so many things that you sort of wonder what they’re thinking.”  
  
“I’ve never been able to understand it myself. I suppose it’s usually the sort of thing where you see a pattern that isn’t there, like seeing faces in the clouds, or maybe you subconsciously work better once you believe you’re being helped.” Mikkel was glad they were speaking Danish, because standing outside the Academy of Seiðr while they conversed about the veracity of the Icelandic religion did seem a bit gauche. He had of course seen many things in his life, enough to wonder if perhaps the general Danish attitude was not the entire truth, but had no desire to have that specific conversation with Tine today. The perspective to deeply consider such things usually only came with having enough strange experiences yourself, and he didn’t feel he was greatly patronising her when he thought it best to wait till those arrived naturally.  
  
“I think it’s weird also.” Vasiliy had barely spoken all afternoon, but of course he’d been around enough Danish by now to catch the gist of it, although his reply came in very Russian-flavoured Icelandic. “That there’s school for it. We don’t have any thing like this.” He went quiet again without elaborating, joining Tine in her contemplation of the goddess’s image. Around this time of year, Mikkel was fairly sure classes would be slowing, but students still passed to and fro through the entrance. Among the Icelandic, there was the occasional sound of a small group speaking Norwegian to each other. When a bell rang inside, causing a flurry of students to start moving, Tine decided she’d had enough.  
  
“So I heard they have special drinks for sale at this time of year, with real cinnamon from the greenhouses!” She led them off on another keen mission to experience another aspect of Reykjavik, her enthusiasm for spending every bit of the money she was being given for this still unfettered by the howling gale.  
  
Mikkel did not like pointless formality. Not only did its presence in the world wear out people’s respect for the protocols that had real value, it was plainly tedious. However, as much as he expected the first day at least to be full of such things, once Mikkel was ten minutes into queueing with Tine for another fluffy blend of milk and spices he decided he was actually somewhat keen for the summit to begin already. At least Vasiliy was having fun with “these puddings”, attempting to lick the top of one as if it was another of the ice-creams they’d eaten yesterday and ending up with milk froth on his nose. As odd and occasionally a handful to manage as he and Tine were as a pair, the friendship that circumstance had thrown these two into was quite endearing.


	2. Chapter 2

Gregarious as Tine could be, she was clearly flagging by the end of the first morning, starting to fumble with the names of all the different people they’d been introduced to. Mikkel couldn’t blame her, nor could he blame Vasiliy for pushing aside pride for a moment in order to hide behind him in the corner. After a moment of wondering whether his job description was meant to involve herding this young man back into conversation, Mikkel heard Vasiliy speak. “I cannot understand that one.”   
  
“He’s got quite a noticable Finnish accent, I suppose.” Mikkel kept staring in the same direction, despite the fact Vasiliy had spoken from behind his back. The delegate in question, a middle-aged man named Heikki with that specific set of typically Finnish features Mikkel suspected he would forever mentally classify as a “Tuuri face”, had been engaged in conversation by some woman from the Icelandic fishing board. She was broad and at the border of middle-aged and old, her rain boots and sturdy lopapeysa seeming to evidence both a history in the real work of fishing and an opposition to abandoning her original style or mannerisms for anyone. With Heikki’s attention occupied by her - Blín, that was her name - and the pot of herrings she was insisting he tried, he was likely not going to bother Vasiliy again soon. “I think he’s busy now, you can come out.”   
  
Vasiliy’s head emerged from around the side of Mikkel’s arm, briefly peeking out at the room again. He had scrubbed up really quite well in his sensible gray tweed cap and jacket, but this hadn’t made him any more comfortable. If anything, he looked even slighter than he usually did, when deprived of his fur coat and put into something that fit well. Mikkel did feel somewhat bad for him in his totally accidental status among his countrymen as “the most experienced with the Nordic neighbours”.   
  
“I think that woman - she there, is not friendly.” Vasiliy indicated with his head rather than being unsubtle enough to point.   
  
“Her name’s Blín.” Mikkel tried not to actually say it too loudly. Vasiliy looked a little disbelieving. “It’s an unusual one, yes, but I believe it was popular here around the 30’s and 40's.” Vasiliy’s face showed a flash of inexplicable restrained amusement before he nodded.   
  
Mikkel regarded the sturdy fisherwoman, not sure if he should express his sense that it was sadly rather likely her problem was with Vasiliy specifically. Based on the tone in which Blín had complimented his Icelandic upon meeting, he had already pegged her as being very much of her generation among Icelanders, the type who had been young when the push to unify the culture had been more active for having not yet finished its work. Such people had near-invariably taken the message of “unity for all facing the new world” thoroughly on board, along with that definition of “all” and “unity” that had focused on being natively Icelandic-speaking or passing as such. Even her body language with the professional-seeming Finn in front of her, whose pronunciation was perfectly comprehensible despite its clearly foreign cadence, seemed tinged by a hint of that patronising attitude still common here towards the nation that found Icelandic hardest to perfect. Well, Vasiliy had seen fit to trust Mikkel with his observations about her, and it didn’t seem likely anyone had specifically warned him about this.   
  
“I think she may just dislike you specifically.” Mikkel hoped he remained comprehensible over the babble, with how low his voice was. It was so hard to guess whether Vasiliy did already know this. Despite his nearly two years of familiarity with the Nordic countries; Mikkel had the impression this was his first time entirely on the turf of important inner-circle Icelanders.   
  
Vasiliy was also watching how she interacted with the Finnish delegate. “It’s possibility.”   
  
Mikkel really had to wonder how exactly he would give a total outsider a clear view of that specific Icelandic disdain for those who would not pass as native speakers. Did he start with them perpetually dragging their feet over including Finns in their eugenics programme, citing a “language barrier” despite functionally comprehensible Finns being widespread for years now? That was an obvious demonstration of it to anyone in the Known World with two brain cells, but Mikkel couldn’t guess at how Vasiliy's intuition would work at all. His silent cultural grappling was cut short when Tine found the two of them, approaching with another Icelandic civil servant of some kind in tow.   
  
“Mikkel! Here’s one you’ll have something to talk to about!” Tine seemed pleased with herself, probably the last thing buoying her up through the inherent exhaustion of this kind of event. Mikkel decided he didn’t have the heart to remind her that he was the last member of this group that was meant to be finding people to talk to.   
  
“Rósalind.” Mikkel filed away the name of yet another Icelandic woman of about his own age - mountain-wind-chapped olive cheeks, brown-eyed, wavy-haired - before offering his own.   
  
“Mikkel.” Stepping aside, he let Vasiliy introduce himself. He noticed with some relief that when Rósalind responded, she did enunciate clearly enough to Vasiliy for it to be a definite conscious departure from the usual Reykjavik mumble, but was still acting like she believed he could keep up with a normal speed. Perhaps there would be enough people like this to avoid the really “unfriendly” ones during this whole back-and-forth.   
  
“She works in sheep! Or well, she did. She’s on the sheep… board, I guess. But it’s farm stuff!” Tine’s enthusiasm, great as it was, cracked a little halfway through her second effort to get Mikkel into the conversation. She was still clearly fading a bit from the long day.   
  
“You know, if you stuff a lot of the snacks in your pockets before you go take a break, I don’t think anyone would notice.” Rósalind tapped the side of her nose, and Tine reacted with a predictable sly glance towards the table. Heikki and Blín had both moved on, leaving it unwatched, and Tine took advantage before the three of them made their way towards one of the exits. Mikkel thought he now understood why she had been so specific about the dimensions of the pockets on that skirt. Rósalind followed the group, and the four were caught in conversation several more times before they made it out the door. Once they were outside, Vasiliy sank into a flat-heeled squat in the sheltered spot near the wall, exhaling as he rested his elbows on his knees.   
  
“You all know there’s the presentation at 16, yes?” Rósalind waited for everyone to catch their breath before speaking. The tone of Vasiliy and Tine’s affirmatives creased her face into sympathy. “You’ll feel better if you take till then as a break, I think. Hide for an hour, I won’t tell anyone, I know the change from a fields person to a meetings person is hard!” Nodding goodbye, she left them alone, returning through the same door they’d all exited from. The door closing behind her left them in blessed quiet for a moment.   
  
It was colder out here, and Mikkel jammed his hands deep into his coat pockets. At least the building was well-lit all the way around, a huge squarish structure at the edge of the Reykjavik suburbs that sat flat on the land. Mikkel had heard that this place was once central to the lives of Old World Icelanders, and the faint shadow of some letters - _COS_ still discernible, perhaps an _O_ on the end - above the entrance of it served as a mysterious hint of what its nature might have been.   
  
Whatever it once was, it now served as a meeting place whenever a larger-than-usual space was needed. As averse as Icelanders were to things “of the old world”, even they acknowledged the utility of simply redecorating the huge cruise liners and buildings. As Vasiliy sat there taking his moment and Tine shivered in silence, Mikkel warmed himself by walking and stamping his feet. A little away from the brightness of the covered doorway, he contemplated the lights of the Swedish “industrial embassy” filtering through the dark and the fog of his breath. A huge building just as blocky as this one, it sat across from this gathering place, blinking slightly from the other side of the wide network of roads separating them. While Mikkel had initially judged its colour scheme to be extremely typical Swedish tackiness, it had apparently been painted in that all-over yellow and blue long before the Swedes had moved their “cooperative projects” into it. Perhaps one day, the rest of the Known World - or even yet unknown world - would also be moving projects into this strange and sparse part of Reykjavik to take advantage of Iceland’s resources and huge old buildings.   
  
“Oh, I’m disturbing you.” The door opened, and a Finnish-accented voice followed it. Mikkel turned back to see Heikki again, looking at least as exhausted as Tine and Vasiliy.   
  
“No, no!” Tine got to reassuring him before Mikkel could, and the Finnish delegate joined the small group of silent avoiders. Returning to the relative cover, Mikkel heard her continue. “I don’t think I met you yet!”   
  
Mikkel was close enough to see a flicker of a very Finnish look of despair as Heikki remembered everyone else’s idea of “quiet time” still included one-on-one chatting. “Yes. Heikki. Agricultural policies.”   
  
“Oh, we’ve met so many people involved in farm stuff, that’s neat!”   
  
“Mm, yes, well, everyone’s needing it all the time.” Heikki leaned against the wall, crossing his legs and arms.   
  
Tine took the hint and went back to quietly shivering, before leaning around to peek at Vasiliy. “Vasya?” Her enquiry in Russian provoked a lengthy response, which turned into a serious-sounding conversation between the two of them. Mikkel was left standing with Heikki, united in their exclusion from what the two were discussing.   
  
“We are preparing in Saimaa for more from Russia, actually.” Heikki finally broke the awkward silence. “Lots of interesting things changing there, agricultural ah, innovations, and with the new neighbours. Yes, it will be interesting.” Having made his pronouncement, he stuffed his hands under his armpits and went back to making a slight face at the awful wind.   
  
“Ah.” Now it was Mikkel’s turn to fail to contribute. He had heard of some interesting developments in animal immunity out there, but on Bornholm, such things had not been relevant to farming life. From the filtered version he got via Sigrun, he had gathered it had even impacted Emil and Lalli in whatever those two were doing out there now, but mentioning that he knew of two people in Finland would surely be a tedious conversation point even if they had known their share of fame. The train of thought Mikkel had been following earlier was perhaps relevant. “Maybe there’ll be something helpful you can develop here. I see the Swedes moved some things into the building there.”   
  
Heikki exhaled at length, the last of it turning into another shiver as the wind picked up again. “We will see.”   
  
The conversation in Russian from the corner ceased, and Tine spoke to Mikkel. “It’s getting close to 16 now”.   
  
Throughout the whole lengthy presentation on Icelandic industry, Mikkel was quite sure he could see Vasiliy and Tine wordlessly nudging each other. Luckily, the information being given was nothing that anyone who read the papers semi-regularly wouldn’t already have known. Mikkel did wonder sometimes, when Vasiliy and Tine would spend time still thick as thieves in the most public places, what the exact nature of their relationship was. So far, though, there had been no cause to make it his business.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In this timeline, the info pages that claim "Iceland speaks Icelandic and all languages other than North Germanic and Uralic are of the old world only" are being taken at face value. It's therefore also a given that a certain history exists, since canon is that a very multilingual nation with its cities preserved became monolingual in less than 90 years.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There are info boxes in chapter 1 now! Thanks Jari!

It felt wrong somehow that nobody had found the body until proceedings were about to start the next morning. The sun not breaking over the horizon until well after 11am left a lot hidden, though, even in open spaces. Morning mist clearing as the sun began its weak, late ascent on the fourth day had finally revealed where Heikki had gone the night before. Tine’s shriek of horror had been loud enough to draw out a huge crowd, and everyone had gathered in front of the meeting-house to stare in shock at the scene spelled out in the middle of the chipped concrete field. Mikkel really wished it hadn’t been her to find him. Had it been someone a little less fresh-faced, they might not have spent the rest of the day in tears.     
  
It was indeed deeply unnerving, even if you had seen a dead body before. Why anyone would have wanted to kill Heikki in the first place was a complete mystery, the scene appearing to be a cold-blooded stabbing with not even a sign of alcohol being involved. Mikkel knew that Iceland was the murder capital of the Known World, with an incident recorded almost every year, but he had been totally mentally unprepared for such a thing in the midst of civilised proceedings.    
  
“He didn’t  _ do _ anything!” Tine burst out with it again, breaking the tense silence that had been prevailing between herself, Mikkel and Vasiliy. The day’s schedule had of course been postponed in the light of this scandal, and the three of them had returned to their lodgings. It seemed right to Mikkel that they remained in the communal area together, even if they were isolating themselves in general. Tine was clearly greatly struggling to cope with all this. If she’d tried to go and panic alone in her room, Mikkel would have felt obliged to try to stop her, a negotiation he would not relish.   
  
“I have no insight into why someone would do this, either.” Mikkel knew this conversation was going around in circles, but at least Tine’s disbelieving outbursts had slowly moved to pure shock rather than tearful shock.    
  
“Mm. He was nice guy.” Vasiliy had been notably better at coping with this than Tine. When he’d seen the body, there’d been no evidence at all of the visceral emotional reaction most of the Icelanders had shown. Mikkel couldn’t have said he was exactly glad that Vasiliy had obviously seen the aftermath of violent death before, but the fact they had this in common did make a day like this a little easier. With Tine’s reaction as a contrast, Vasiliy seemed almost strangely calm. Mikkel was all too conscious of the fact he seemed cold himself at times like this, but was sure a keen eye could have picked up on how profoundly disconcerted he was. Perhaps if Vasiliy’s expression in Icelandic were not so clunky, Mikkel would have noticed the signs.

Well, with one person on the brink of going to pieces again and one of indiscernible mental state, sitting in silence just wouldn’t do. Mikkel pulled out a pack of cards, and Tine looked incredulous at how obvious the attempt at a frivolous distraction was. She played along, though, and Mikkel was sure he saw her calm a little as his playing managed to fill her with much pettier frustrations. “This is  _ not _ fair. Both of you have a way better poker face than me.”    
  
“It would also help if you didn’t hold your cards so low they’re practically on the table.” Mikkel collected his winnings again, taking her little “ooh!” of annoyance as another small victory over the worry quagmire. Vasiliy still seemed barely engaged, which he claimed was because three people did not count as a real game. He didn’t even respond when Tine took one of the candies he’d won off her right from his pile, eating it while she peered at cards held so badly Mikkel could again see them. Maybe Vasiliy was indeed more bothered than he seemed.    
  
The shadows in the room became deeper and longer, and the three continued to play, nobody quite being motivated enough to turn on the light until it was almost properly dark. As Mikkel rose to finally do it, he glanced out the window, and had to pause at the sight of four people on horses and one small car coming to a stop in the street below. Flicking the light on, he returned to the window and peered downwards. The street lights caught the people’s badges as they approached the lodging-house. Police officers, apparently coming in the door on the ground floor. Mikkel had never seen this many police in one place before, much less with a real motor vehicle. People driving such things outside of a tractor or army vehicle was always a bit strange to witness, and the militaristic vibe given off by an actual car was very offputting to experience in a quiet Reykjavik street.    
  
Tine watched Mikkel continuing to peer out the window as the last of what looked to be half of Reykjavik’s police force exited the car and entered the building. As the stairs started to thud with a half-dozen people’s feet, she spoke up. “Mikkel? Is something happening?”   
  
“I believe so.” Mikkel heard the footsteps get louder and louder. As they cleared the first floor, his sense that trouble was rapidly headed specifically in their direction reached a point of depressing certainty. The doorknob turned and four people immediately spilled into the room, hands already on the handles of their batons. Whatever the problem was, it was clearly very serious. Appraising the room, the officers looked at each other and relaxed slightly, one letting go of a baton handle he’d been gripping as if already prepared to strike with it.    
  
“You’re the translator?” The first one to speak was a woman who approached from the middle of the crowd, holding a small piece of paper in front of her while she addressed Tine.    
  
“Yes.” Tine was looking at the force on display with obvious shock, her eyes flicking over to Vasiliy where he stood stock-still.    
  
“Can you confirm this writing is Russian?” The woman held it in front of Tine’s face, not actually handing it over.    
  
“Yes, it is.” Tine’s voice wavered as she answered, her eyes narrowing as she squinted at the handwritten scrap then going wider again after she’d spent a moment reading it.    
  
“Did you write it?”   
  
“No, it’s - uh, it’s from when Vasya and - I mean, it’s Vasiliy’s handwriting. What do you -”   
  
“Thanks, that’s all.” Pulling a small bag from her pocket and placing the note inside it, the woman tilted her head towards Vasiliy, and her five companions converged on him. He stepped back into a defensive stance, and three of the police picked up their batons in response.    
  
“No!” Tine cottoned on to what must be going on quite quickly. “No, no, no! You’ve got it wrong!” As she stepped forward, the woman who had questioned her held up her hand.   
  
“This is a criminal investigation and all of you would be best off complying.”    
  
Vasiliy still had his hands up in a blocking position, staring past the officers surrounding him towards the woman, making the face he often made when not quite sure what he’d heard. Tine gasped and said something to him in Russian, and he replied without moving, his voice tight.    
  
“If you’re going to talk gibberish to him, at least tell him he should come quietly.” Mikkel cringed at the scorn in the woman’s voice, but hung back. With an emotion oddly similar to stepping in rancid swampwater many miles from a change of socks, he was realising all at once that Vasiliy’s coolness at the morning’s terrible news had been far more sinister than he’d assumed. Mikkel’s immediate attempts to guess at what the motive could possibly have been were hard to follow up, when this scene was still unfolding in front of him.    
  
Tine spoke in Russian again, and while reading the tone of that language was hard, her apologetic manner and return to the brink of tears was impossible to miss. Turning to Mikkel, she spoke in Danish. “Quick, what are we going to do about this?”   
  
“Let them take him in, I suppose. Tine, they won’t harm him, don’t - ” Before Mikkel could get the words out, Tine started crying anyway at the sight of Vasiliy being handcuffed and escorted down the stairs. Following Tine as she tailed the pack of police, Mikkel reached ground level in time to see him being led to the car and gestured towards the back seat. Tine was in the middle of yelling more in Russian as the door was shut, and she trailed off as the car trundled off down the street, flanked on all sides by cantering horses. As the unit rounded a corner and the sound of their movement faded, Mikkel realised they’d both come out without their coats, Tine having also forgotten her shoes. Tine leaned on a lamp-post, standing in the pool of light and staring at the corner the police had disappeared around, seemingly oblivious to the snow collecting on her light cardigan and soaking through her stockings.    
  
“Tine, you’ll catch something standing out there like that.” After days of speaking Icelandic to Tine for the benefit of all the others around them, it felt oddly familiar to tell her in Danish.    
  
“They think he killed Heikki.” Tine didn’t turn to Mikkel as she said it.    
  
Mikkel sighed. “They’ve found some evidence for the idea he killed Heikki.”    
  
Tine turned around this time. “Well it's bad evidence. He’s not like that.”   
  
“You yourself said the note they had was his writing. Presumably they found it on the body.” This was not an argument Mikkel had intended to get into this abruptly, but he did feel the vehemence of her tone merited a mildly-put correction.    
  
“It’s - I don’t know where they got that! It’s from when we were passing notes to each other during the - the presentation, it’s just a note about that ugly old woman from the fishing board who hates him - I bet  _ she _ did it and planted it!” Tine stamped her foot into the tiny patch of grey slush her own pressure on the snow had produced, looking extremely convinced by her own off-the-cuff assertion. “Mikkel, we have to go find her!”    
  
Mikkel bristled at how hasty Tine was being. He thought he knew who Tine meant, and didn’t like her either, but the evidence here was not what he would call solid. “I do assume they have more evidence than the paper. And if not, I’m sure they’ll release him within hours.” He didn’t know why he was playing advocate for the Reykjavik police force here, but someone taking action on the lingering unease he’d felt all day should have been a good thing, even if it had come so chaotically and close. “I’m sorry, Tine. Maybe it’s nothing, and if so, I’m sure he’ll be home by the morning. Do you think you know what he was doing last night?”   
  
Tine opened her mouth, then closed it again, a look of horror dawning on her face. “No. I have no idea. He said he was going for a walk by himself, just to look around the place.” Mikkel’s hope that this was perhaps making her consider the other side faded very quickly when she followed that with “So nobody will be able to prove he’s innocent! Shit, shit,  _ shit _ !” Her swearing was cut off by an icy wind which rattled the windows of every house in the street and made her teeth chatter.    
  
“Please come inside.” Mikkel tried not to sound impatient. “The police know what they’re doing.”    
  
“No, they  _ don’t _ . Vasya is  _ not _ like that.” The nickname use and tone in which Tine repeated herself filled Mikkel with a deep weariness.  He couldn't help but recall his earlier thoughts regarding the question of how invested those two were in each other.   
  
“People are often disappointing, Tine.” Loudly unspoken, he thought, was the fact that girls ready to defend the misunderstood nature of a young man tended to be the most regularly disappointed of anyone.     
  
Mikkel really did try to be sympathetic about the crying he could hear for the rest of the evening. The more he thought about this awful outcome, the worse it got. He could not comprehend at all what might have driven Vasiliy to such an act, but it had been a strange few years for the young man. People cracked in odd ways, and Mikkel had known many a person under pressure to show previously well-repressed sides of themselves. None had ever been quite so evil as murdering an innocent in cold blood, but  _ someone _ had done it, and Mikkel generally refused to feel shock at unpleasant surprises these days. The main thing, really, was wondering how on earth any discussions could go forward with the Russian ambassador in custody. 


	4. Chapter 4

It took two more days for proceedings to resume, but even with the summit’s goals so heavily compromised, there were many things that could be and needed to be discussed. Keuruu had been contacted by radio, and someone was coming from Finland as quickly as possible to try to fill Heikki’s role. Mikkel didn’t know how long the illusion of normalcy could be preserved for outside of this conference. News of a murder had gotten out, and so many people were close to the events that the newspapers couldn’t help but pick up on the link between a suspect existing and there being a notable absence from the meeting-house. The fact that not a single person who had met Vasiliy could provide an alibi was leaving Mikkel more and more grimly convinced that this was not only a murder, but the early stages of a major international incident.   
  
Tine was still both distraught and impossible to convince that this wasn’t a terrible mistake. Frustrating as it was, Mikkel had to admit the fact they wouldn’t let her see him during questioning did seem somewhat counter-productive. Vasiliy’s Icelandic was serviceable, but if they wanted a long and precisely worded story out of him, they could have at least attempted getting Tine to put aside her feelings and translate. Deciphering exactly why they’d continued to thwart her efforts to see him wasn’t hard, though, when he suspected nobody wanted to deal with someone who was coping with the situation so incredibly badly. It seemed horrifyingly obvious that this was only the beginning of something much bigger than any one person’s bond with another, which added another layer of frustration to dealing with Tine's reactions. Such violence in the very first stages of attempted international relations would surely only escalate, and the helpless feeling of being an inactive part of a major catastrophe was one Mikkel had truly hoped he would not have to feel again.   
  
With this special looming dread hanging over him, attempting to preserve normalcy felt a little like fighting a house fire with eggcups of water. Tine’s insistence on going in and taking notes, “so  _ when _ Vasya gets out I can catch him up”, was at least something to do with the day. The time-expanding sense of being in the eye of a storm didn’t fade. Losing Tine for an hour or so in the mid-afternoon, Mikkel found her near the back of the venue fussing over one of the goaty little Icelandic sheep that had been brought in for a display. Rósalind, the woman who’d led them outside on the day they’d spoken with poor Heikki, was standing nearby and explaining something about plötulopi to some man Mikkel thought he might have recalled being Swedish. When Tine saw Mikkel approaching, she straightened up and gestured at the sheep. “Look, aren’t they sweet? They’re like scruffy little versions of normal sheep!” She illustrated her affection by scratching her new friend between its crinkly horns.   
  
“I suppose so.” Mikkel had gotten quite used to the sight of this sort of sheep while travelling in Norway, where what little Cleansed hillside existed was well on its way to being repopulated from exclusively Icelandic sheep stock.    
  
“Rósalind says she’ll give me some pre-made documents about the sheep, in case it saves me time on the note-taking - oh, ugh.” Tine’s expression lost all trace of calm and her voice trailed off as her eyes focused on something behind Mikkel. “No, don’t turn around! It’s  _ her _ .”    
  
Mikkel snapped his head back towards Tine. “You know, she does still have a name, even if you’re convinced she’s evil.” Blín usurping the probably-Swedish man in order to start her own conversation with Rósalind was clearly audible from where Mikkel and Tine were anyway, even without turning to catch her words. It wasn’t anything that improved Mikkel’s mood. Besides being distasteful, her sheep chat segueing into talk of how  _ predictable _ it was that it had been the Russian felt dangerous. It only increased Mikkel’s sense that however this was going to escalate in the coming months, it was going to be huge and terrible. While there was nothing truly new under the sun, and he’d read enough history to know what true international conflict might look like, he had not really expected to see it in his lifetime.    
  
Tine didn’t want to hear it either, but even when they abandoned the sheep pen it was impossible to not be constantly reminded of the fact this summit had been derailed and how. Blín was far from the only one to feel perfectly happy saying now that they’d never liked Vasiliy, and while nobody was engaged enough with Mikkel's role here to bring it up to him specifically, the mutters were constantly audible on the sidelines until Tine finally gave up in the mid-afternoon.   
  
As much as he felt a sense of neglectfulness leaving Tine alone, Mikkel decided it was probably good tactics to be taking a break from her company. Her constant theorising as to what the real reason for her friend’s imprisonment might be was wearing, when Mikkel was so otherwise emotionally engaged by his sense of impending doom. Going for a walk by himself wasn’t a great option either, with how little there was to do. Half the shops were closed at this point in the year, and the rest on the shortest possible hours. Still, the moment Tine had been deposited in her room, he stepped out again. Walking along the seafront on the way back would certainly clear his head, if the wind didn’t remove it first.   
  
Mikkel’s neck and lower face were as tightly wrapped in a scarf as he could manage, his coat-collar up and his hands stuffed firmly into his pockets. With his ears covered and the streets full of the rattling noises of yet another winter storm rolling off the sea, it was at least impossible to hear if people in central Reyjkavik were also discussing the murder case as if it were a foregone conclusion. Mikkel didn’t know why that part bothered him so much, when it was a conclusion he’d also come to himself. Maybe it was just that it made the unspoken and uncertain consequences seem closer.   
  
The sun was now long gone and the sleet turned to pure shards again. Vicious lashings of ice blurred the glow of the street lamps, and the many hazy lights of the city filtered skywards through the mist and rain. When Mikkel peered up into the dark clouds forming a shroud over the stars, they felt too akin to the nearby sea, the roiling murkiness seeming to have a bottomless weight it was on the brink of throwing down. The streets began to clear of people as the storm hit harder, and Mikkel felt it when a seam somewhere on his coat leaked, letting in the horrible wet cold. When he had to take his hand out of his pocket to shield his brow from the latest freezing-sharp thrashing, he decided it was worth it to duck into a shop for a moment. As he entered the nearest one, he recognised the interior and felt a strong urge to immediately exit. Remembering who he’d last been in here with was not what he’d wanted, but the shopkeeper was already putting down the repair work she was doing and addressing him. “Oh, you again!”   
  
“Indeed. Not buying anything, I’m afraid. Is that alright?” The wind shook the door in its frame behind him, as if to remind Mikkel of what he would face if he tried to look for another place to shelter.    
  
“Oh, yeah, fine, it sounds gross out there. I’m closing in fifteen minutes, though.” Mikkel watched her look back down at her work, seeming to forget about his presence, and took off his hat and scarf in an attempt to get the best 15 minutes worth of drying.    
  
He had already started to mentally relocate somewhat, letting the warmth of indoors soak into him and the slap of wind on the door occupy his ears, when the shopkeeper spoke again. “So the one you came in with the other day is doing alright now?”   
  
“Excuse me?” Mikkel snapped back to reality. “Tine?”    
  
“No, the Russian. I guess they must have let him go after the talk we had. Sounds like an awful time, but I guess it’s all over now?”   
  
Mikkel couldn’t work out what he was missing here. “Talk?”   
  
“You know, when I told the policeman I saw him that evening. The Thursday, when the incident happened? I know I’m not meant to talk about being involved, but I guess he’s been out for long enough to have told you himself what happened by now, so it’s fine if I ask how it went?” She looked up, her expression changing as she beheld the obvious tension in Mikkel’s stance. “Oh, shit. Is it still all a secret? Pretend I didn’t say anything, I'm just being nosy!”   
  
“He’s still being held.” The cold Mikkel was feeling now, easily sharp enough to break through the fug of the day’s slow-burning panic, had nothing to do with the icy water in his hair. “Within the investigation, the line is that no alibi has been found at all.”   
  
The shopkeeper put down her sewing needle entirely. “Huh.”   
  
Mikkel looked out the window. It seemed unlikely any more people would be coming in today. “If you feel like using your last ten minutes in here to tell me what you told that policeman, I’d be very grateful."   



	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the relatively long gap in updates. I was up north getting accredited to shear sheep. Hoping the pace can pick up a bit from here.

Perla had been taking the rubbish out after the long close-down, the one caused by someone’s insistence that the shop be practically deep-cleaned once a week, even the back part where only she usually went. The big bin by the back door was at least as heavy as she was, and the main reason she hated closing by herself was hauling it down the “only a few” steps and dragging it to the “only a little way” skip at the end of the dimly lit alleyway. Holding the metal lid on tight, she repeatedly tipped it from side to side, making it move forward corner by corner as if it were walking.    
  
It took barely a minute in total to get it all the way there, but the sloppy snow falling on her ungloved hands was already making them start to hurt. Climbing up on one of the big skip’s handles, she jammed her tingling fingers under the snow-covered lid and hauled it upwards, nearly throwing herself off balance as it hit the wall with a snow-spraying thud. Jumping down again, she braced herself for the big shove of tipping the contents of her bin inside.    
  
“Do you need help?”    
  
She had been so caught up in her own heavy breathing and straining as she lifted the bin that she hadn’t even heard the man’s approach. Letting the bin fall down from the knee height she’d so far achieved left wet specks on her trousers as its base messily reunited with the slush. The fact she momentarily couldn’t categorise his accent made her end-of-shift brain feel like it was at the edges of its functionality, but when she turned around, she immediately remembered exactly where she’d heard it before.    
  
“Oh! It’s you! Is there a problem with the order your group picked up?” Perla would ordinarily have told anyone arriving later than twenty minutes before closing some benevolent lie about shop policy and length of appointments, but she supposed being from beyond the edge of the world meant you should have some exceptions made for you. Arriving hours after closing and still expecting a chat was a bit beyond the realm of mere exceptions, but the interest of talking to such a curiousity-sparking person did at least partly make up for it.    
  
“Hmm?” Vasiliy was almost a silhouette in the light of this alleyway, hanging back from getting too close to her. “Mm, no. I just walk here.” Perla immediately felt a little bad for jumping to the conclusion that he didn’t know how opening hours worked, when he had begun with asking if he could be the one to help her. “And I think this is very heavy for you. No insult meant.”   
  
“Er, yes, it is.” Perla stepped to one side of the bin, wondering what the friends she’d heard loftily speculating on the summit and the deep mystery of these outlanders' outlanders would think if they knew about this interaction so far. “Well, if you insist. Or uh, if you’re offering, even. Thanks.”    
  
Getting the rim of the bin over the skip’s edge and tipping everything in was indeed much easier with assistance. Vasiliy was not a large man, but was still half a head taller than Perla, and if she recalled her earlier measurements properly he was likely to be in rather better shape. With the bin emptied, Perla let out a loud sigh of relief. “Oh, I can finally go home!”    
  
“Mm. Maybe I do that too. There aren’t so many quiet places to walk.” Vasiliy pulled his gloves back into place from where moving the bin had shifted them, making as if to leave.    
  
“Do you want to go home?” Perla wasn’t sure where she was going with stalling him, but even as tired as she was, she remembered how hard it had been to suppress her curiosity when he and his companions had come into her shop. She wasn’t on the job now, and the off-chance that he might want to talk was an exciting one.    
  
“Oh, well. It’s only break from being talked to about future trains, and things, when I’m out walking. It’s important, but I’m tired. So, not so much.” Vasiliy shrugged with a  _ what can you do _ expression.   
  
“Wow, yeah, that sounds difficult. I wouldn’t know anything about that.” Perla started dragging the empty bin back towards its place just inside the door. “I bet you must get loads of questions about how you ended up here, as well.”   
  
“Ah, not so much, actually.” Vasiliy looked like he was barely resisting the urge to grab the bin and move it for her, and when Perla shoved it behind the door and went to finally lock up, he remained standing there almost at attention.    
  
“Well, it’d be my first question! I’m Perla, by the way - ”    
  
Perla didn’t expect to be able to talk to him for so long. The freshly cleaned kitchenette in the back of the shop got its first re-speckling of malt drink drops as she learned the story of Vasiliy coming west for the first time. He was ten years her junior, and she felt a little bad at how much of an effort she had to make to not giggle at some of his guesses about how Reykjavik functioned. It made sense that he’d been a little afraid to ask stupid questions so far, but the idea that someone this gently curious had been feeling so intimidated for most of his visit did make her wish someone was looking after him a bit better. Learning some more details of the story she’d followed so closely in the papers a couple of years beforehand was also a very interesting surprise.    
  
“They definitely never said any of that stuff about the ‘moment of contact’, from the papers it sounded like the Finnish mission was a lot more organised! Wow, it’s a miracle that went so well.”    
  
Vasiliy drained his cup. “That’s how you tell me.”    
  
“The phrase is ‘You’re telling me’, I think.”    
  
“Yes.” Vasiliy yawned. “What’s the hour?”   
  
“Oh, hell. Two. Is it going to be bothering anyone when you come back this late?”    
  
“Mm, it’s okay. I’m scout - a scout - I was that at home. I can return silently.”    
  
Perla let him out, wincing as she opened the door at the depths the temperature had plunged to as the night had worn on. “Well, I hope there’s no trouble, thanks for the chat!”   
  
“No problem. It’s good, to talk with some person who does not want to know about distant future barley transport.” With that, Vasiliy departed, and Perla locked up before making her own way home. Thinking about what had happened just now, she grinned into her scarf. Once she’d finished reading her most recent book purchase and was ready to go actually talk to her friends again, this story would definitely be one to share.    
  
******   
  
“So she just told you all that and then kicked you out of the shop?” Tine was incredulous. Mikkel had found her already in her pajamas, forlornly but doggedly writing out a Russian version of the shorthand notes she’d been taking all day. He had seriously considered sitting on this information while he worked out how to control her response to it, but the nagging guilt of having totally dismissed her reaction beforehand had prompted him into immediately sharing. She hadn’t even let him go hang up his coat until she’d heard it all.   
  
“I think that once she’d told it, she felt quite quickly like she’d done something wrong. The policeman who came to collect the story off her apparently said it wasn’t good to share too much about this investigation, in case it made it in some way harder to collect evidence.” Mikkel had been assured by the shop assistant that she was certain the policeman in question hadn’t somehow just forgotten the story. Apparently she had actually known him when they were both teenagers, going with her brother to help his father with Réttir, the autumn sheep retrieval, for several consecutive years. The nervous speed to her assurance that she didn’t think he would be neglecting his job made Mikkel suspect he and she were toying with the same conclusion, namely that the ongoing “lack of alibi” claimed for Vasiliy had absolutely nothing to do with forgetfulness, although the cognitive dissonance on her end was likely much greater.    
  
“So they're hiding something.” Tine’s mind was clearly ready to go there, too. Mikkel was surprised by how level her voice was as she took a deep breath and continued. “You said her name was Perla, right, the shop lady? What’s her last name?”   
  
“I didn’t press for it. She seemed quite nervous about all this.” Mikkel was slightly kicking himself, now. While knowing where she worked of course helped, if they needed her again and she wasn’t on shift, finding someone who could be anywhere in Reykjavik by just “Perla” would be difficult.    
  
“Hmph.” Tine’s uncharacteristic calm stretched into a moment of silence. “You know who I’m about to blame for this, don’t you?”    
  
“You’re still convinced Blín’s framed him.”   
  
“Well,  _ someone _ has! And it’s someone who can intimidate the police into losing evidence - or maybe she’s bribing them with free fish…”   
  
“I would hope they’re a little bit above being bribed with tinned herrings.”   
  
“Well what if they all just hate him as much as she does? They don’t want more coming, so they just - they’ve just made it seem like a bad idea, right?” Tine lit up a bit more again as she convinced herself of her own theory. “You have to admit it would make sense.” Mikkel was still in the stage of turning his shrug into words when she started again. “And - and - oh, we have to get Vasya out of there, and find out who really did it! Shit, how are we going to do that when we can’t get the police to help?”   
  
“We don’t actually know they’re being deliberately hostile yet.” It would of course be a fair conclusion given what they knew so far, but given the plans he could see forming in Tine’s head, Mikkel did feel obliged to point this out. “And I’m not sure busting him out of the police station is necessary or helpful to whatever amateur investigation you have in mind.”   
  
“He doesn’t know we know he’s innocent!” Tine looked profoundly distressed by the idea.   
  
Mikkel did feel a spike of worry and guilt himself as he wondered exactly what kind of mental state Vasiliy was in, stuck in the police station with only presumably quite disingenuous interrogation in Icelandic for company. It didn’t help that Mikkel also had no immediate or productive suggestion for how one went about this. Tine kept talking, her mouth going a bit faster than her brain as she thought it through, but a basic plan starting to come out as she thought out loud.    
  
Mikkel wished he could throw himself into trying to fix the problem so easily. The looming, recurrent sense of having to knowingly watch something terrible happen was not improved by what he’d learned today, and most of his instincts were telling him that whatever enemy they were seeing the shadows of was too big for trying to be a viable course of action. Mikkel had already mentally turned over what seemed like every possible way of trying to account for the “no alibi” line, including trying to find a reason Perla might have been lying, but on a deep level he felt both that he believed her and that there was no good interpretation for the rest.    
  
The way Tine had been throwing ideas around that evening made Mikkel quite sure that the next morning’s visit to the summit venue was not purely for note-taking, and he was right. Halfway through the day, Tine sidled up to him, mouth half full and her hands stacked high with the tiny fishcakes they’d been serving all morning. “Hey, Mikkel. You’ve been on a few boat crews, right?”   
  
“More than a few. Why?”    
  
“Do they, uh, record who’s on them every time they leave shore?”   
  
“Indeed they do.”   
  
“Like, reliably? Would you trust the ship’s log to tell the truth?” The blank determination of the earlier morning had been replaced by a spark of excitement.    
  
“Yes, Tine, you should know they’re very serious about tracking who comes back to this island after so much as going a kilometer offshore. Do I get an explanation of what you’re trying to get at here?”    
  
Tine looked around, swallowing her mouthful before leaning in even closer. “I spent most of the morning talking to Blín about… you know, general stuff she’s been doing lately, and I worked out that the night of the murder, she claims to have been offshore.”   
  
Mikkel nodded. “And?”   
  
“So we could check that. If it’s true.”    
  
“I suppose it would rule out the quite specific possibility of her both arranging it and doing it herself.”  Mikkel did not want to be cruel about this, but thought his tone did carry enough of a warning that he wasn't sure this would be decisive.   
  
“You think she wouldn’t do it herself?” Tine’s whisper was sharp. Mikkel had to admit that for all her faults, Blín did seem like the hands-on type. While he remained nowhere near as convinced as Tine that she was involved at all, there was something to the idea that of all the people who didn’t like Vasiliy, she might have been the one to actually do something about it. “We should try to get hold of those ship’s records.”   
  
Mikkel wondered what Tine would do if this particular line of investigation - if it could even be called that - was exhausted. He knew very well that there might be much he was missing about this situation, and suspected Tine’s energy here was mostly due to being not so encumbered by that awareness. Well, the only way to find out was to take her down to the docks and try to find what she was looking for.    



	6. Chapter 6

Reykjavik harbour felt bleak as a cliff face at this time of year. Mikkel had spent many days here during the brighter, warmer times; loading endless crates for one job a decade ago, he’d become used to the airy keens of the kría catching food for their chicks and the to-and-fro of people using what summer there was here to eat chips and ice-cream outdoors. Now, with the birds long flown to some land lost by the known world’s knowledge, there was only the endless low roar of a windswept ocean. Just enough of the sun remained that Mikkel could see the silhouette of Esjan across the harbour, the dying light giving the mountain range’s edges an orange glow.  
  
“I hope you’re right that coming down before evening makes this more likely to work.” Tine was scanning the dimly lit docks for a sign of the records hut Mikkel had described when he’d been convincing her to wait until the next day.  
  
“It’s not so much that coming down in the afternoon makes it _more_ likely, but that turning up at 20:00 makes it _less_ likely.”  
  
“Is there a difference?”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
Tine rolled her eyes. “Where is it?”  
  
“At the end, if it’s where I think it should be.”  
  
As they battled the wind on their way towards the records shed, Mikkel and Tine passed a heavy-coated dockworker who had paused to eat his sandwich. He was broad and very dark, with curls that sat around his head like the clouds shrouding the mountain peaks behind him. When he wished the two of them a happy new year, it was with a tone that said his goodwill was reserved purely for the few others who had drawn some short straw and ended up working today. Mikkel returned the greeting, although he felt like the markedness of time passing was not good news at the moment. The more he thought about the situation, the more it seemed that the relative speed of the “investigation” currently going on would move things beyond their reach before they could make any progress at all.

Of course the shed was locked. Mikkel contemplated the relatively empty dock and wondered if he could get away with picking the lock. It didn’t look like a particularly difficult one. When he remarked on this, Tine looked surprised. “You know how to pick a lock?”  
  
“I’m not the world’s best, but yes.” Mikkel pulled at it, glancing back again and noticing that the dockworker they’d asked was still definitely there, eating his sandwich at a speed that showed admirable dedication to milking whatever increase on the hourly wage applied today. “Perhaps it’ll be better to come back once the new year is a few days past.”  
  
“We’re running out of _time_ , Mikkel!” Tine hissed.  
  
There was a small figure also picking their way between the boxes and ropes, approaching the increasingly shadowed form of the snacking dockworker. After an exchange which the wind kept from Mikkel’s hearing, they began to approach the shed as well. When there was only about twenty metres left between them, the half-face poking out of a massive scarf finally became familiar, to Mikkel's surprise. “Perla. Fancy seeing you here.”  
  
“Oh, hah!” Perla was clearly quite surprised to see them two. “Are you looking for the schedules too? That guy over there said they were around the other side of the building.”  
  
“We’re looking for evidence.” Tine said it with a deeply uncharacteristic flatness that merged into harshness. “Because there might be something here that would help clear Vasya’s name.”  
  
“Ah.” Perla shifted her weight from side to side. “Yeah, I haven’t heard anything else about what’s going on there. Um, I’m going round here now.”  
  
Tine followed Perla as she circled the building. Mikkel tailed them both, watching Tine attempt to loom over the comparatively much shorter woman as she ran her finger down the coming week’s list of arrivals.  
  
“What are you looking for?” Mikkel had seen Perla find what she was looking for and take out a piece of paper to write it down.  
  
“ _Vøringfossen, projected 1400-1500 on the_ … Um, oh, my brother’s coming back to town in a few days, I was just checking what sort of time the ship comes in.”  
  
“Have you _asked_ what’s going on with the evidence you gave?” Tine continued as if Mikkel hadn’t started a new conversational track at all.  
  
“Tine, I really don’t think she’s making this difficult for us on purpose. I know you’re getting impatient, we’ll come back as soon as we can.”  
  
That actually did make Perla wince. “Um, how far have you two gotten through… finding things out, here?”  
  
“Not very.” Mikkel wondered if it was wise to even be sharing that much, although Tine had let most of the cat out of the bag already in admitting to their amateur investigation in the first place.  
  
“Oh.” Perla folded her piece of paper and put it back in her pocket. “I, uh.” She paused again, leaning slightly back from Tine’s continued attempts to look cross. “Um, you know, I do feel really bad about this. I thought maybe you'd have it more under control, and...”  
  
“Right.” Mikkel waited for her to finish the thought.  
  
“I really wish there was something I could do, but I just - I already offered to write the statement down and everything, and really tried to make sure they got it right - I did like him! Vasiliy, I mean - isn’t there any way I can help?” Perla looked a little surprised herself that this was the conclusion she’d come out with. “I’m just really sorry! I feel so bad, but I can’t really…”  
  
“None of us really know what to do.” Mikkel picked up where she trailed off.  
  
“ _I_ think I know what we should be doing.” Tine leaned back around the side of the building, peering in the direction of the locked door.  
  
Perla looked deeply uncomfortable. “I feel like I should be offering both of you something. I don’t think the cafes are even open, though, so I can’t even pretend to offer hospitality by getting you lunch...”  
  
She ended up accompanying them on the walk back into town, and Mikkel’s impression that she felt genuinely helpless and guilty about this only increased. It seemed very much like she’d been stewing in her own thoughts ever since they’d last met. Whatever her initial thoughts had been when she’d asked him to leave the shop, they had turned into an obvious worry for Vasiliy and sense that something had gone terribly wrong. If Mikkel had known of anything he could suggest to turn that guilt into helpfulness, he would definitely have tried to do so, which made the fact he didn’t know of anything even more frustrating.  
  
“Oh, I live up there, so I should probably let you go.” Perla stopped on Grettisgata, pressing her hand on the plain wooden front door of a starkly squarish and brown pre-Rash apartment block. “Hey, look, if there is anything it turns out I can help with though, let me know.” Mikkel mentally noted that the building was number 92, and mentioned to her that the place they themselves were staying was only a few streets away, casually describing how one might reach it from the nearest shop. Recalling that the police station was also merely two streets away in the opposite direction made the last few minutes walking back to their little apartment feel very quiet, aside from the rush of the growing night wind. Mikkel assumed, based on Tine not breaking the silence at all, that she was still upset by not having made any progress today.  
  
“Does it at least help to have met someone who might assist us?” Mikkel finally tried to talk to her twenty minutes after they’d returned, when she had already taken out the folder of work she continued to insist on doing.  
  
“Not when there’s no plan beyond the one lead I can think of, and when you’re right about it barely even being a lead.” Tine didn’t look up from her writing, but Mikkel could hear her voice cracking. Well, it made sense that her resolve and unusual calm couldn’t have lasted forever, given how much of a dead end they were obviously pushing against. “They’re going to convict him properly soon and - and then that’ll be the end of it, and nobody will want questions about what really happened brought up again - and he won’t be able to go home, _ever_ , and - what are they going to do about the cooperation? Some of the stuff the Nordic Council was offering was going to be _useful_ \- ”  
  
“Tine.” Mikkel moved to her side, squatting down by her chair. “Look, what you’ve been doing so far has been good - ”  
  
" _Don’t!_ You were looking at me earlier as if the mission down to the docks was completely stupid!” Tine pushed back her chair and stood up, making Mikkel jerk back into standing as well. “You thought I was being stupid before as well, when I said he didn’t do it.”  
  
“Okay. Yes, I did a bit. My apologies.”  
  
The blotches crying was bringing out on Tine’s face were almost as red as her hair. “You think it’s hopeless and I’m an idiot for trying.”  
  
“I don’t think you’re an idiot.” Mikkel crossed his arms, wondering quite how to put this. “I’m just not convinced hoping for much is a sensible course of action.”  
  
“Oh, great, fine, that helps.” Tine slammed her folder shut on the table, crossed her own arms and twisted her face as if trying to tighten her tear ducts.  
  
Just as he’d been on the day of the murder, Mikkel was deeply and uncomfortably aware of how cold his own reactions looked sometimes. Tine was right that fatalism's usefulness was often limited to self-defence, but he couldn’t immediately change the fact that he defaulted to it these days, nor could he make compelling clues as to the identity of the real murderer exist. Looking at the undeniably smart but painfully young girl crying in front of him, Mikkel did feel genuinely terrible for contributing to her state, but expressing that was as ever difficult.  
  
“I really am sorry for assuming the worst about your reaction, when he was arrested. I misread what information I had.” Mikkel saying that just made Tine sniff and narrow her eyes. “My job here is to help you do what you need to do, and I’m going to do that job.”  
  
“Okay.”  
  
“And it’s not just about the job. I don’t want to see a man wrongly convicted any more than you do.” Mikkel hoped this level of earnestness would pay off. Tine did seem a little mollified, although her lip was still trembling.  
  
“The fact he’s stuck in there is the worst part. That and the lack of time before it’s all considered closed.”  
  
“The time issue is a major one, I must say. And unless we have some means of interrupting the process of justice - such as it is - itself, it seems irresolvable.”  
  
Tine’s eyes lit up. “You’re not suggesting we bust him out of there?”  
  
“I genuinely wasn’t suggesting that, actually.”  
  
“Are you ruling out the possibility, though?” Tine immediately straightening up and looking brighter was what Mikkel had wanted, of course, but he hadn’t intended it to be quite this much of a call to action. “It would solve so many problems at once. We’d get more time while they tried to find him again, and I’d be able to ask him what’s happened, and maybe it would lead us somewhere! And they can't have their "well, it's a done deal, time to finish all these important decisions" if he's still out on the loose. They'll have to wait, and then by the time they can get to deciding he'll be able to join in again.” The last point seemed to satisfy Tine greatly, and Mikkel did note she had a point despite his relative lack of hope about the last part working out.   
  
“ _If_ it worked.”  
  
“You can pick a lock.”  
  
“I imagine there’s a bit more to busting someone out of the police station than just picking the lock.”  
  
“Well whatever it is - ” Tine was interrupted by the sound of the little machine on the wall emitting a gurgling series of beeps. “Huh. Someone’s visiting us.”  
  
The “someone” turned out to be a police officer, who scoured the apartment and turned over a few things before nodding a curt goodbye and leaving. The reason for his visit was never fully explained, and Tine stayed very quiet the whole time he was there. Mikkel watched him from the window as he finally left, then turned back to Tine. “How obvious did you make it that you were looking for clues today?”  
  
“I _thought_ not very - Shit. How the hell are we going to hide him if they’re coming over to check on us?”  
  
“Please take me expressing reservations about that whole idea in the spirit of honesty I intend it.” The idea that someone was keeping tabs on them was unnerving enough that Mikkel felt a bit unsteady about the fact Tine barely dwelled on it. It occurred to him that if there any evidence existed that Tine's prime suspect was shrewder than she seemed, this was it.  
  
“You said you’d help.”  
  
“That I did.” Mikkel supposed, if this was what they were doing, his collaboration would at least make the slim chance of it succeeding into a slightly thicker one. “And technically speaking, someone has now offered us any favour.”


	7. Chapter 7

Mikkel had been part of a few plans in his life that had successfully relied on the concept of “just mad enough to work”. There was some chance this would turn out to be one of them.   
  
“I really did not think I would ever end up doing something like this.” Tine had been adamant that creating some kind of distraction would be on her, but the amount of times she’d been photographed with Vasiliy for the papers had left her too high-profile for any quiet and wiles-based attempt to lead them away in person. Mikkel, as the mere assistant, had been mostly shoved out of the way during photos, so it had been decided that he was the one who needed to sneak inside. Even he had been seen in person by half the police force already, but the skeleton staffing of this time of year left a chance he wouldn’t be immediately recognised. It wasn’t a chance Mikkel felt happy relying on, but given the plan Perla and Tine had concocted, him stepping up and being willing to risk it too was only fair. Mikkel had to admit to some surprise at how quickly it had escalated once the two of them had started plotting.   
  
“And you’re sure the shop is insured?” Tine was still holding the pile of fireworks very gingerly.   
  
“Oh, yeah. Once the place got flooded five years ago, and I still got pay for the time I couldn’t come to work, so honestly having to help with the cleanup eventually will balance out. I guess they won’t be able to open for a while after this.” Perla dug out a final firework from the drawer she’d been keeping them in. “Good thing I bought these months ago, getting them all today would make it look kind of suspicious to have it all explode tonight.”   
  
“I do have to ask why you bought an entire drawer of fireworks and didn’t even let them off on new year.” Mikkel was quite impressed by the sheer volume of them.   
  
Perla just pointed at the picture sitting on her mantelpiece. “This jerk as usual. The plan was to go and set them off somewhere when Einar gets back. He’s insisted on doing that every year since we were nearly as small as in that picture, so of course it’s up to me to organise it when he’s off doing whatever armies on the mainland do.” From the loving exasperation in her tone, it was clear that she and this Einar had rather different levels of appreciation for chaos, although if today’s plotting was any indication they were perhaps more alike than Perla’s usual demeanour would suggest.   
  
Mikkel approached the plain-framed little photo. It was of what appeared to be Perla at around age ten and a boy who must have been just a couple of years younger. They looked likely to be related, the boy even more clearly descended from someone who had come to Iceland from the very far east. The moment captured certainly told a story, with the younger boy’s finger on his lips and his other hand busy rearranging various pebbles inside what looked like a toy boat, unnoticed by Perla as her focus was held by smiling politely at the camera. Peering closer, Mikkel asked “So I take it Einar is the brother you’ve mentioned. Is that some kind of game?”   
  
“Ah yeah, it’s a um - our mum calls it sungka, I don’t think many people but her know it. You can probably guess he’s not meant to be swapping the bits on my side around, though. Okay, I think this is all the fireworks, we should probably get a bag for them so you’re not seen going through town with all of them in your arms.”   
  
“I guess so.” Despite being convinced of the logic of this plan earlier, Tine was starting to look very nervous.   
  
“We could still come up with some other plan.” Mikkel reminded her.   
  
“What better way is there to throw a spanner into the works of all this, though? It doesn’t feel possible to win given what we’re working with now, so...” Tine waved the hand she’d just freed up, continuing to stuff fireworks in the backpack Perla had found. “I don’t know! It feels like it can’t be worse!”   
  
“A situation where they’re held up by him being on the loose somewhere does at least contain things we want.” Mikkel helped her stuff the last of the fireworks in there. “Well, I guess we’re doing this. Tine, remember what I said about leaving a longer fuse than you think you need.”   
  
“One day I will actually ask you how and why you know these things.” Tine shouldered her pack. “I guess you should try to leave a fair bit after I do.”   
  
“Yep. There’s still plenty of time for us all to be in place by 23.”   
  
When Tine left, Mikkel looked at Perla. “I must admit I’m surprised you’re so up for this.” The question of what was in this for her, as someone who barely knew them all, felt quite pertinent.   
  
Perla did the little shift of discomfort that was starting to seem familiar. “I mean I’m not _happy_ about it, but I haven’t been happy losing sleep over the idea that something’s wrong here, either. It’s at the point where I might well get more peace with him on my couch.”   
  
“I see.” Mikkel looked around the apartment. “It’s a little nerve-wracking how close this place is to the police station.”   
  
“I guess they don’t know I’m this involved though, not yet. And, er.” Perla gestured around the flat. “There is sort of space to hide in here, an attic that's hideable with one of the hangings, maybe... I’ve been trying not to think about that part too hard yet, but well.”   
  
“Good to hear.” Mikkel sat down, knowing they had some time to wait before they actually set off. There was just about enough time to sit here and think about how easy he’d expected the task of “follow Tine around Reykjavik” to be. If there was evidence for gods with a twisted sense of humour, this might be it.   
  
Mikkel was at least not a figure that stood out on a Reykjavik street at night. A tall man walking, the buttons of his coat done up well enough to obscure his face, was not an unusual thing to see. Even dithering with Perla on the street opposite the rear of the police station, pretending to read the signs decorating the ancient phallological museum, did not even attract a second glance from the officer hanging around the back door. A surreptitious glance at his watch told Mikkel they should be expecting their distraction any moment now, and as they passed close to the back of the station, Mikkel heard the first small boom from the row of shops down the road.   
  
The first boom was immediately followed by a crackle, then a growing cascade of high-pitched whistles and crunching noises, before the general screaming started and the officer leaning against the wall was abruptly roused from her mid-shift stupor. The lights were bright enough to flicker even around the slight corner between the police station and the fabric shop, and Perla slipped around to the other side of the building as Mikkel pressed himself against the wall and let four officers run by him before sidling towards the door. Slipping his foot just far enough into the door to catch it, Mikkel turned to watch the retreating backs of the police. The cacophony in town had gained so much volume and light that not one of them looked back to make sure the door closed, and Mikkel slipped inside.   
  
It felt like this had already gone slightly too well. Letting the door quietly click shut behind him obscured most of the noise of the chaos down the road, and he looked around with real nervousness. He was not someone to whom physical sneakiness came naturally, but listening hard, he began to suspect that Tine’s explosion had actually been dramatic enough to make everyone in the back of this place take off towards it. As Perla had suspected, the skeleton staffing that everything in town was on today was greatly to their advantage this time. Moving inwards and turning the first door, he began to explore, taking his conclusion as provisionally confirmed.   
  
At first glance, he thought the room with a barred cell in it was empty, but on closer inspection he realised there was another facing the first one he'd seen. Poking his head around, he found the person he was looking for and immediately pressed a finger to his lips. Vasiliy looked more or less as he’d been when Mikkel had last seen him, certainly not happy but seeming quite unharmed. When Mikkel pulled out the pick and tension wrench he’d hastily crafted from Tine’s hairpins, Vasiliy’s eyes widened and his mouth dropped open a little, but he kept his silence perfectly as he watched the work begin.   
  
This was far from the easiest lock Mikkel had picked. The first pin moved only after almost half a minute of fiddling. It had been far too long since he’d done this, really, and Mikkel’s constant listening for interruption didn’t make his focus any better. This deep in the building, the noise of the outdoors was totally deadened, and the sound of any human movement might mean discovery. When he heard the sound of a chair scraping backwards somewhere ambiguously close by, he almost jerked hard enough to lose his progress on the lock.   
  
Footsteps began in the next room, then stopped. The chair scraped a little way on the the floor again, and a man’s voice said “Perla! Fancy seeing you here. Before you ask, no, I don’t know what’s going on in town, they left me at the desk when they all went to investigate so if _you_ have a clue…”   
  
Mikkel would have to ask Sigrun the name of some god to thank when he next saw her. Mostly tuning out Perla’s attempt to make “well, when you came to get my statement I realised I hadn’t come to ask after the farm in a while...” conversation, he flicked a second pin upwards, then a third and fourth. The fifth one took the longest, and Mikkel could feel the tension in Vasiliy’s gaze as the lock finally gave in.   
  
The door of the cell made a small scraping noise that made Mikkel cringe as he pulled it open, and Vasiliy slipped out of the cell, mouthing “ _What_ is happening?”   
  
Mikkel pulled off his coat and stuffed it into Vasiliy’s arms, pulling him close to whisper in his ear. “Meet behind Grettisgata 92 at four. Hide your face well until then. The back door of this place is around the left corner.”   
  
Vasiliy hesitated for a long moment, turning his face slightly towards where the man on the desk was still having an unsuspectingly laconic conversation with Perla, then shrugged Mikkel’s coat on and nodded before disappearing. The silhouette he had in that coat made him look like a child, but the collars of it did certainly obscure who he was. Moving back into the hallway and waiting a moment while he heard the noise of the back door shutting, Mikkel’s attention drifted back to the conversation being had at what was presumably the front desk, and noticed with a start that he could see the silhouettes of the two people talking behind just one frosted-glass door.   
  
“Well, Perla, it was good to see you but I’d better check on what’s going on around here.”   
  
Mikkel shuffled down the hallway as quickly as he could, disappearing towards the back door himself moments before the footsteps started. Stopping the door with his fingers, he waited to hear the start of the _“Where’s he gone?”_ swearing before allowing the noise of it clicking shut, slipping away into the night again with as much stealth as he could muster. While picking the lock had felt like it had taken an eternity, he could still hear the sounds of general chaos on the street full of shops, and nobody stopped him as he beat a hasty retreat around several corners. Hopefully whatever Perla heard would reassure her that the plan was still on, the rendezvous with Vasiliy in five hours’ time would go according to plan, and the news tomorrow morning would be that of a murderer escaped and still at large.


	8. Chapter 8

“This feels weird. Do you think people are looking at me? It feels like they know. Surely they have to know somehow.” Tine was whispering this to Mikkel from a distance of only a few centimeters from his ear, practically under her breath.   
  
“Just keep taking the snacks like you usually do.” Mikkel didn’t like how nervous Tine was getting. Before they’d come in for the day, he’d already dealt with one minor meltdown, and thought he’d communicated that it was perfectly normal to feel like this after some covert activity. Yes, it always felt like someone must have seen you and the law was waiting in the wings for you, but it was a simple fact that people did get away with things and sometimes that person was you. Mikkel actually fancied the chance that nobody would have been paying enough attention to the alleyway behind that store to notice Tine entering. It felt a bit silly to seriously entertain the logic of the runes they’d been reported as using - ones intended to find who had been the culprit in a break-and-enter - but there was nonetheless some relief in deciding that even if you did assume they had some functionality, Tine having used a perfectly legitimate key would presumably thwart them.   
  
Tine had also wanted to check on whether Vasiliy had made it to his hiding place, but had accepted the reasoning when Mikkel had discouraged her. There was no way that either the two of them or Perla would be totally free of suspicion, and being actually seen to know each other would risk giving the whole fragile game away. The limited competence of the police last night had been greatly affected by the element of surprise, and now the scope of what they could get away with was much smaller. In a few days, perhaps they might be able to make contact, but for now the fact Vasiliy was still reported as missing would have to be their reassurance.   
  
“Right. Yeah.” Tine straightened her back and took a deep breath. “Um, I guess we could go to that panel, the one with some Danes we saw about earlier.”   
  
“Mm.” Mikkel didn’t know how good he would be at taking information in today, but a Danish-Icelandic scientific effort would likely be interesting enough to stop Tine thinking about her guilt, at least enough to stop acting suspicious for a few moments.    
  
Tine didn’t take notes, instead sitting in her chair rather more primly than usual, hands folded together in the pleats of her skirt. The presentation was actually fascinating, a collaboration involving some unusually open-minded Icelandic scientists taking advantage of the continuity of weather data kept on Bornholm, not quite what was usually discussed at a meeting like this one but nonetheless relevant to many of their interests. After apologetically admitting to the use of some old-world records, the young Icelander speaking explained that a gradual drop in average temperatures had been recorded since year 30, forming a pattern that was projected to continue. “So what your grandma tells you about the winters not being quite so cold in her youth is totally correct! The difference is so far minimal, but we’ve come to believe based on these Danish records that we can actually expect it to slowly reduce the frequency of major storms, and if I can take a moment to explain the way we’ve visualised the changes in sea ice coverage - ”   
  
Mikkel took a break from peering at the map the presenters were poking to look around the room. Most of the people here were ones Mikkel recalled were from some kind of agricultural or fishing background, as you would expect for what was essentially an extremely long-term weather forecast. When his attention was clearly off the presentation, the stocky woman who’d been sitting beside him and shuffling around in her clothes leaned in. “Do you have a pen?” She spoke Swedish. Presumably this meant they’d already been introduced, although Mikkel uncharacteristically didn’t recall it.   
  
“Perhaps.” Mikkel rummaged inside his own pockets, feeling Tine turning to look across him when he found one and handed it over.   
  
When the presentation ended, the woman turned to him again and offered her hand to shake along with the returned pen. “Agneta.”   
  
“Mikkel. Here I was assuming we had met.”   
  
“Ah?”   
  
“You knew I was Danish.”   
  
“Oh, of course, sorry if that came off strangely.” Agneta smiled reflexively. “I think by now people know who you are, though. Part of the contingent.” Her head tilt towards Tine indicated what contingent she meant. “Must be a weird day for you two.”   
  
Mikkel briefly considered responding that it was almost reassuring to know that no matter how weird a day it was, the nearest Swede would be willing to just open their mouth and ask about it. “Yes.”   
  
“I guess this must mean he really did it. But where’s he going to go? I mean, we’re on an island, even if he hid in the mountains what would he do up there?” Agneta’s wide hazel eyes and close-cropped hair made her look like some kind of excited pixie that fed on current-events discussion, if said pixie had hit middle age and found a job in the civil service.   
  
“That we are. I suppose we’ll see what happens.”   
  
“Do _you_ think he did it? Must be weird given you were meant to be helping him out!”   
  
“Well, it’s the police’s job to find that out, I suppose, when they find him again.” Mikkel didn’t look around to see what face Tine was making, and hoped her poker face had improved since the last time she’d had to try using it.   
  
“Damn, though, what if they don’t? Feels like there being a criminal investigation running through this is slowing everything down, and it’s getting annoying enough trying to work things out with the Finnish guy gone - uh, I mean, _obviously_ it’s more sad than annoying, but I never spoke to him, so - well, it’s just making the stuff we were _meant_ to talk about more difficult, uh, obviously.”   
  
Mikkel already felt slightly exhausted by the idea of hearing more of this, but the seats around him were emptying very slowly and just cutting her off would have been more awkwardness than it was worth. “Which things?”   
  
“Oh, you know, the usual - I’m overseeing a lot of stuff to do with the Baltic herring fishing and he had a load of dispatches from my Finnish equivalent, you would not _believe_ how complicated fish business can get sometimes.” She leaned in and stage-whispered in a way that was barely quieter and no more subtle than speaking out loud. “And doing it here was always going to be a pain, you know how _controlling_ Icelanders can get over fishing - ”   
  
“Yes, quite. Anyway, it was lovely to meet you.” Mikkel shook her hand again and backed away as the space opened up for Tine to also leave, and once they were out of earshot, Tine was predictably hissing in his ear.   
  
“Was it obvious, do you thi-”   
  
“No, but it will be if you keep doing that.”   
  
“Sorry, I’ll try to - oh, Blín, hello!” Tine's voice rose to a sharp squeak as Blín loomed into view, looking deeply irritated. Despite the dour look on her face, she did pause at the way Tine was acting.   
  
“Tine. Do you need some fresh air?”   
  
“Ah, ha, no, it’s just ah.” Tine looked like she was on the brink of blurting out what she’d done any moment now.   
  
“It’s just an odd day. Nobody seems to be having a good time with these repeated derailments.” Mikkel interrupted her, his tone plainly conversational. “We’ve been practically held up by a Swedish herring industry type who could not stop going on about how difficult all this is.”   
  
Blín made a face. “Agneta? She’s not wrong. Not that it’s any fun doing business with the Finns to begin with, if you can even call the way they run things ‘business’. Obviously a terrible tragedy last week, but getting to draw up most of our plans without him might well be smoother than the alternative.” Her irritation apparently made her even more blunt about her views on the world than ever. “Tine, no offence, but I think that notebook of yours is unlikely to ever see use, if you’re still trying to take notes for that knife-murdering Russkie. Go home, everyone here has a million things to sort out.” She cleared out of their space as abruptly as she had run into it, which was lucky because this outburst looked like it had Tine on the brink of either tears or the second murder of the conference.   
  
“I hate her.” Tine hissed it to Mikkel as she leaned on the outside wall of the building, whispering loudly despite their relative distance from anyone. “Blín is the _nice_ version of what I’d call her.”   
  
“She’s rather abrupt, to say the least.” As genuinely as Mikkel sympathised with Tine’s anguish, he also felt like there was a thread sticking out of the things he’d seen today, one which if pulled on would open a hole big enough to let a lot of light through. The dark concrete field was not going to give him any answers, but he stared into it anyway. “Do you wonder if perhaps Heikki’s murder wasn’t just a means for framing Vasiliy?”   
  
“Um.” Tine looked baffled by the change in topic. “Why else would someone do it, though? Half of them hate Vasya, and Heikki didn’t do anything.”   
  
Mikkel wondered how to put exactly what he’d been noticing. “I don’t detect much respect here for Finnish business sense. You’ve been here as much as I have, haven’t you noticed yet?”   
  
“Well yeah, they have that whole - didn’t the other Finnish guy here spend an entire day trying to get people interested in his plan to stop people needing to pay for cat training? I guess some of their priorities are kind of weird. You wouldn’t _kill_ someone for that though, right?”   
  
“ _I_ wouldn’t, personally.”   
  
Tine made an uncomfortable noise. Mikkel thought about it a little more. So far he’d felt, for lack of a better phrasing, somewhat genre-savvy in his insistence on not being misled by the herrings. There was perhaps something to it, though, some significance to the place Heikki had intended to play in some inter-Nordic negotiation. What Mikkel might do with that information remained to be seen. The circumstances behind Vasiliy’s note to Tine being planted on Heikki’s body, and how they might fit into this germ of a theory, were also still a complete mystery to him.   
  
“Do you think she was right that I shouldn’t even bother coming in tomorrow? Maybe looking like I still have hope for him is making it worse. But I don’t know what I’m going to do all day.” Tine looked restless just thinking about the idea of sitting at home, waiting out the days until it might no longer be suspicious to go see Vasiliy.   
  
“You were having quite a nice time in Reykjavik before all this started, and the rent for these weeks is already paid.”   
  
“Mikkel!”   
  
“You did say you wanted to go back for more of those milk things.”   
  
Tine gave one of the looks she seemed to have been developing specifically for Mikkel, this one telling him that if he was joking, it wasn’t funny. “Tell me more about the Heikki thing. Maybe there’s something I can look up.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Runes to detect who has done a crime are historically attested in Iceland, mostly ones aimed at finding out who stole your things. 
> 
> Agneta may not know it, but even in our world she'd be right to say the Icelanders get a bit weird about fish - the only war Iceland has fought since 1550 was over fishing territory. The three "Cod Wars" took place between the 1950's and the 1970's. Icelandic losses consisted of one member of the coast guard.


	9. Chapter 9

“And in the newspaper archives I’ve found a whole load of stuff about fishing squabbles with the Norwegians from about fifteen years ago.” Tine was reading off the notes she’d taken at the library with increasing enthusiasm.    
  
“Oh, yes, I remember those. I was working off the coast of Norway at the time.”   
  
“Mikkel! You could have told me about them before.”    
  
“I didn’t think they were relevant to why one might murder a Finn.”    
  
“Well - ” Tine sagged as she moved abruptly back to disappointment. “I guess it isn’t, is it.”    
  
This was more or less how all their interactions had gone over the past few days. Tine had been convinced that some visits to Reykjavik library would yield some kind of hint, some idea of where to look for some motive against Heikki or the Finns in general, but despite Mikkel also throwing himself into this work there had been nothing conclusive. He was becoming keenly aware of the limits they had as foreigners here. While he considered himself a reasonably informed person, the undercurrents informing the shadier decisions made in Iceland were always going to be somewhat invisible to those who hadn’t lived here for decades. Regrettably, the only conclusion seemed to be that this just wasn’t working.   
  
“Perhaps this is enough library time for today.” Mikkel really couldn’t make it sound like he still had much hope.    
  
“We could go back to the harbour today, given it’s still not that late.” For once, Tine sounded like she wouldn’t insist on it.    
  
“Well, we might as well try.” Mikkel could do with the fresh air at least, and when they’d walked to the library it had almost been a clear day. The sky was even clearer as they emerged from the building. Mikkel resented it in a way he was aware was quite irrational, feeling like the rain in Reykjavik stopping for an entire day must be using up their whole share of luck.    
  
The clear early January sky made the harbour briskly cold. Although the indirect winter sunlight didn’t make the sea shine as it might in summer, seeing the snow on Esjan illuminated did somewhat lift the spirits. The ramps and platforms here were much fuller today than they had been during their last visit. Mikkel recognised the huge Rønne-bound ship in the process of being loaded, and could see people rushing around preparing for another vessel to dock. The one coming in was smaller, although of still considerable size. When the wind went slack for a moment, taking its low roar out of Mikkel’s ears, he registered that the murmur in the air had actually been the sound of Norwegian sailors’ shanties. The slap and hiss of the sea between the dock and the Norwegian ship muddled the bright lilt of their words, and soon the wind picked up again, returning their approaching voices to being just a disturbance in the rushing.   
  
Tine stopped and stood on her tiptoes as they crossed the docks, craning her neck to get a look at the approaching Norwegians. “They always sound so happy.”    
  
“I wonder if that’s Perla’s brother’s ship. I think the name is right.”    
  
“Oh, maybe?” Tine squinted at it. “I can’t remember. Hey, look, the door is open!”    
  
The records shack was crowded, and the elderly man sitting inside the windowed stall by the wall didn’t even question why they wanted a list of offshore trips for a date over a week prior, handing over the book as quickly as possible before turning back to another elderly man he’d been chatting to. When Tine returned to ask for the records of the two ships she’d decided might have been Blín’s alibi, she did get a rather stranger look. “What exactly are you looking for, miss?”   
  
“Ah, I wanted to check where my… friend was.”    
  
“And you couldn’t ask your friend?”   
  
“It’s complicated?” Tine was not good at this. Mikkel wished he’d pre-emptively stepped in again. Luckily, the old man was far too apathetic to deeply question Tine’s desire to look at what was technically public record anyway, and Tine was soon flipping through both the books with lower lip firmly between teeth.    
  
“Shit. Look.” There on the ship’s log, plainly stating that she had been offshore for the whole night of the murder, was Blín’s name. “Damnit!” The crack in Tine’s voice didn’t bode well.   
  
“Let’s get outside, Tine.” Mikkel returned the books and thanked the old man before leading her back through the door. “Listen, I genuinely don’t think this is as dead an end as it looks.”    
  
Tine was very agitated. “I’m not even surprised, though! I don’t know how we’re going to find a real lead. We’re hopeless at this.”   
  
“The thing is, I fear that the roots of this may go deep enough that one person not being  _ physically _ involved doesn’t mean - ” Mikkel was distracted mid-sentence by the corner of his eye catching what appeared to be a familiar face, the bizarre deja-vu of having seen similar-looking Icelanders before hitting even harder than usual. “Sorry, what I meant was - ”    
  
“Mikkel! Mikkel! Oh it  _ is _ you!  _ Mikkel! _ ”    
  
Mikkel did a triple-take as he realised his impression of a familiar face had not been a false one. Of all people, Reynir Árnason was here on the dock, a pack on his back and a look of intense joy on his face as he bound over like an enthusiastic puppy.    
  
“Oh my goodness! Fancy running into you here!” Mikkel gave up on any chance of finishing his train of thought as Reynir reached them, looking like he was barely restraining himself from giving Mikkel a hug. Tine was looking at Mikkel with a clear expectation of learning who on earth this person was.    
  
“Tine, this is Reynir. We’ve travelled together.” Reynir extended his hand the moment he heard Tine’s name, shaking it and still beaming.    
  
“So what are you doing here, Mikkel? Wow, it’s so busy in town at the moment, is something happening?” As Reynir started his enthusiastic interrogation, Mikkel noticed that he’d continued to get slightly taller since they’d last met, filling out at the shoulders a bit too. His voice still sounded as airily absent-minded as it always had, and the strong resemblance to an eager puppy was only enhanced when he started waiting for a response, watching with bright eyes that made him look like he was waiting for Mikkel to throw a stick.    
  
“We were involved in the trade talks that have been going on for a couple of weeks now. Agriculture and border-crossing trains and all sorts of things.”    
  
“Oh! Oh wow, I’m dumb, I had no idea that was happening!”    
  
“Really?” Mikkel had been under the impression the Icelandic news had covered little else.    
  
“Well I’ve been at home, and neither of my parents subscribe to any kind of paper, so.” Reynir looked a little self-conscious. “I mean, it’s nice there of course, but I think if Reykjavik was hit by a comet none of us would know for about three weeks. You would think we kept up with things, we’re not even an hour from Akureyri, but my mum’s just one of those sorts, you know? When I went to the Academy, I might as well have gone to the moon. I think that made her even more proud though, it was  _ so _ nice, when I graduated she - ”    
  
Reynir just didn’t stop, jumping freely between topics to produce a friendly ramble in the same way he always had. Mikkel listened through a long explanation of how much time Reynir had taken over learning to be a mage, the detours he’d taken in his education, and the journey between the farm and Reykjavik he’d started today. When he finally got to his reason for being at the docks today, Mikkel had to interrupt. “You’re on your way to Finland? Why?”    
  
“Oh, well. You remember what I was writing to you about a few years ago, with the sheep project.”   
  
“I more or less recall that.” Mikkel did appreciate Reynir’s attempts to stay in contact, but to say he remembered every detail - or even most details - of the lengthy and chaotic letters would have been a bald-faced lie.    
  
“Well, anyway, Laura - you remember I told you about Laura? - she’s gone full-time with them now and I have a really good feeling about going to give her a hand! I do miss working with the Finn sheep, you know, they’re just a bit different to the ones here, and it’s  _ so _ exciting to get to work with this given how useful it’s going to be! I feel like I’m helping, you know? Of course it’s a  _ bit _ weird with some people at home, being ' that guy from the Finn sheep project' , they're all great people but you know how not all the shepherds here are convinced 'world-changing stuff' is a good thi - ”   
  
“Oh, it’s the sheep immunity thing! I remember reading about that.” Tine finally chipped in, sounding relieved that she’d found something she could contribute to enough to stop the flow of Reynir’s chatting.    
  
“Oh yeah! Hey, you must have met some of the people from the sheep project if there’s farm stuff, right?” Reynir eyes flicked up as he recalled a roster of names. “You know, maybe Gunnar, or Jón Geir, or Snæbjörn, or Rósalind, or…”   
  
“We’ve met a Rósalind, yes. Slender woman, dark eyes?” Mikkel was grateful for the fact that Icelanders could be very reliably derailed by discussion of other Icelanders one had met.    
  
“Oh!” Reynir somehow brightened up even more. “Yeah! She was actually the one responsible for putting me on that project in the first place! I have no idea why she trusted  _ me _ to make it succeed, because  _ I _ wouldn’t have, but I guess she knew what she was doing because it worked out super great! You should tell her I say hi.”    
  
“Er, next time we’re at the conference I’ll mention we ran into you.” Mikkel wondered if he should mention the fact that the conference had been derailed by a vicious murder. It didn’t seem likely to be either productive or relevant to Reynir where he was going. “Are you going to be in Finland for long?”    
  
“Oh, who knows. Definitely for the summer. I think I’ll be back sometime in the autumn. I can’t leave my mum alone for too long, I think, she’s going to go mad with a totally empty nest! I think she’d adopt a son-shaped rock if it fell against her door now. Oh, though! Will you still be here? We could meet up.”   
  
“I think we’ll be gone.”   
  
“Oh no! What about when I’m on my way back, I’ll be going through Bornholm!”    
  
“That sounds good, Reynir.” Mikkel found it hard to look past the looming disaster he was currently trying to tackle, but if the world hadn’t been torn apart by the worst-case outcome of this political nightmare by autumn, it might be good to entertain Reynir for a while. Mikkel hoped there would indeed be some future context where his general manner didn’t clash horribly with the concept of time pressure.    
  
A voice rang out over the docks. “Last call for Rønne! All passengers should be on board, last call!”    
  
“Oh, shoot!” Reynir started, his stance shifting to prepare to run, and turned to Mikkel one last time. “I  _ will _ work out how to meet up with you on my way back, okay? It was great to see you but I gotta run!” Finally, he did exactly that, his lanky legs carrying him over to the gangway just in time to scrape in front of the person starting to push it up.    
  
“How long did you travel with that guy for?” Tine's eyes stayed on the huge ship as it pulled up anchor and slowly started to maneuver its way out of the dock.   
  
“Several months. He is somewhat less chaotic than that sometimes.” Mikkel did have to give Reynir enough credit to note that despite the presentation of ideas in his letters, it was clear that he’d accomplished a lot since they’d last met. Looking at the dock himself, Mikkel saw that Norwegian soldiers had started spilling out of the boat coming in, thick-limbed and numerous enough to make the crowd obscure everything. “Hmm. Do you think that this lot being in town will make it less obtrusive if we were to visit someone?”    
  
“I do get that you’re trying to make me forget the disappointment of the lead being nonsense. You’re right though.” Tine looked like she was thinking. “Maybe we wait a few hours, and then we can finally go see Va - we can see if it all worked out.” 


	10. Chapter 10

It was long after dark when they finally visited. Perla came down to the door when they rang her bell, beckoning the two of them in with a look of panic, and kept her finger on her lips until they were inside her apartment. Tine was unlacing her shoes before she even got in the door, tossing them down under the coat rack and disappearing around the corner speaking hushed Russian before anyone else could get a word out. Mikkel heard Vasiliy’s response, Tine’s loud squeak of joy, then a quiet “oof!” and the sound of someone staggering backwards.  
  
“Oh, I feel really bad about how happy she is.” Perla’s face was so visibly tight as she locked the door behind her. Catching Mikkel’s glance at her strange action, she crossed her arms and hugged herself tightly. “Yeah, I don’t know what locking it will even achieve, he has a key to here. Shit.”  
  
“Perla?” Mikkel stopped taking off his own shoes and hesitated. “What’s happened?”  
  
Perla looked at her feet. “So my brother came over.”  
  
“Ah, yes. We saw the Norwegian ship at the harbour today.”  
  
“He - look, I tell him everything. I just do!”  
  
Mikkel felt his heart drop into his shoes. “He’s gone to the police.”  
  
“No! No, not that, at least, but he - he listened to the whole story and said he was getting his captain! And I don’t know anything about her. I mean, I tell him everything for a reason, but I don’t know what he’s about to drag into the situation - I’m so sorry, Mikkel, I can’t lie to him but I should have known there would be chaos…” Her tone was rising, her hands flailing.  
  
“Perla. Panicking isn’t going to help. Does Vasiliy know?” Mikkel’s question was answered when the Russian muttering in the next room turned into Tine coming back around the corner, looking horrified and speaking Danish.  
  
“Mikkel, Perla’s brother’s gone to tell on all of us to his captain!”  
  
“I’ve just heard.” Faced by the rising panic around him, Mikkel switched back into Icelandic, raising his hands and taking the tone he would have used when separating two of his younger siblings mid-brawl. “Everybody! Take a deep breath.”  
  
Everybody paused at once. Mikkel continued. “We are going to sit down and work out what we’re doing about this.”  
  
“Um, I’m not sure we have a huge amount of time for that.” Perla sounded deeply apologetic to be interrupting the push for reasonableness.  
  
“Tine’s understanding of the situation seems to be that your brother has gone to get us in trouble. Is that correct?” Mikkel responded to her levelly, hands still halfway up.  
  
“Oh! No, no, no, I just - I don’t know _what_ he’s gone to get us, to be honest.” Perla’s grimace looked rather like the expression Mikkel would have made himself if certain of his own younger siblings had waded into a delicate situation.  
  
“He’s weird guy.” Vasiliy hung back behind Tine, looking deeply unhappy with the situation. “I don’t know where I can go from here. I was waiting for new ideas, if you two would come.”  
  
“There isn’t anywhere else.” Tine looked on the brink of bursting into panic again, or perhaps starting to yell at someone. While Mikkel was also potentially ready to be extremely upset at Perla for her indiscretion, the time for expressing that was absolutely not now.  
  
Mikkel addressed Perla. “What exactly is your brother’s situation with his captain?”  
  
“Oh, um. Well, he doesn’t talk about rank too much, but he speaks good Norwegian and I think he’s been with her for quite a few years, he and his partner have been working out there every summer for ages.”  
  
Mikkel was well aware of the Norwegian army’s reputation and its consequent attraction for adventurous young men from all over the world. Exactly what Einar’s experience had been while setting himself up over there might prove very decisive here. Of course, the Norwegians were more willing than most to flout Icelandic plans, the relative ferocity of the fishing conflicts Tine had been researching that morning a testament to the fact they were always attempting to hold themselves up as equals. If this Einar had gained some loyalty to Norway throughout his time there, perhaps Mikkel’s hunch about skullduggery in the herring negotiations could influence him towards being an ally. “And you’re certain he isn’t about to turn up with a load of police?”  
  
“Absolutely. I begged him not to, I know he wouldn’t.” Perla’s expression was deadly earnest.  
  
In the brief silence after that, Mikkel heard the sound of the main door to the building opening, and the sound of many heavy pairs of feet ascending the stairs. “Well, I suppose we’ll find out soon.”  
  
It was some reassurance that Norwegian became identifiable as they approached. The sharp sound of a higher-pitched voice rising above the mens' mumbling made Mikkel start. For the second time that day, he experienced the strange feeling of encountering something that seemed familiar at a time he wasn’t expecting it. Surely not, even if the circumstances did technically seem to make it possible. Backing up against the wall to make room and followed by everyone else inside, he waited as the conversation stopped and one person audibly fumbled for a key. The door opened, revealing what appeared to be the adult version of the little brother Mikkel had seen in Perla’s picture. He was a slender and bright-eyed man in a well-worn Norwegian soldier’s tunic, with straight black hair almost to his shoulders. The sight of the captain standing behind him was exactly what the half-second of voice had made him hope for. It filled Mikkel with relief so abrupt it might as well have been a physical blow.  
  
Sigrun’s mouth fell open, her expression just about surprised enough to match Mikkel’s feelings. “ _Mate!_ ” Shoving her subordinate aside, she strode in and immediately grabbed Mikkel by the shoulders in joy. “What are _you_ doing here? I should have known that the bullshit I’ve been hearing about had you involved somewhere!”  
  
“I suppose I shouldn’t be so surprised to be told we were getting a Norwegian captain and then find you, either.” Mikkel brushed at his jumper where Sigrun’s hands had hit it, affecting total stoicism.  
  
“You know _this_ person too?” Tine’s shriek of bewilderment was loud enough to carry into the staircase.  
  
Getting all eight of the men Sigrun had turned up with in Perla’s tiny living-room-meets-kitchen space was like packing a small bag for a three-season journey. Eventually the lot of them managed to be compressed into there, leaving a vast pile of tall, sturdy leather boots by the door. Tine was wedged into the corner of a sofa by the three hefty men also squashed into it, Vasiliy perching on the armrest next to her, and Sigrun opted to lean against the wall while yet more men squatted and sprawled by her feet. She listened to the whole story of the murder case again, straight from Mikkel and complete with their latest theories on the matter. Tine’s muttered summaries to Vasiliy prompted a few unhappy reactions from him, especially when the telling veered into explaining what had happened with the authorities. When they reached the part about starting to think it might have something to do with the fishing, Sigrun let out a long noise of interest. “Those sneaky fuckers!” Glancing around at the Icelanders in the room, she added a “No offence.”  
  
“Well, it does feel like there’s something a _little_ dodgy going on here.” Perla’s addition was in a rather less confident tone than Sigrun’s. It seemed quite unlikely that she often had this many people in her living space, and she had needed to listen in on the Danish-Norwegian conversation via her brother, who had been standing by her and leaning slightly to repeat everything into her ear in low Icelandic.  
  
“What did she say?” Sigrun narrowed her eyes at hearing something she didn’t understand.  
  
“That she also thinks there’s something weird about this.” Mikkel thought about whether there was anything else. “By the way - I suppose given the way we’ve attracted attention to this flat tonight, we should probably move Vasiliy on soon. I do have an idea as to where he might be safest, although it will require looking a few things up.”  
  
“Why not keep him around? Whoever’s started this, we’ll find out, and he can give ‘em a slap himself for all the trouble he’s been put through. Send the boys round to help, you know...” When Sigrun said that, Tine hesitated to translate it, and her hissed explanation to Vasiliy was rather longer and more worried-sounding than what Sigrun had said.  
  
“I fear it might take a while to work out the root of this. Tine and I have been trying for days.” Mikkel paused as he noticed Vasiliy muttering back to Tine. “Is he asking something?”  
  
“Yeah. He wants to know why all these guys are suddenly keen to help. I’m kind of wondering that too.” Making a face, Tine paused before continuing, looking deeply awkward at having to say it here. “Is it not kind of weird that they just immediately trust our story?”  
  
Mikkel took a moment himself, trying to work out how to easily explain why he and Sigrun had the understanding they did. “Sigrun and I go back a long way. The story is a long one, but the short version is that I am grateful to be unsurprised by her instant support.”  
  
“Hah! Sap.” Sigrun looked like she would have punched him on the shoulder if they’d been closer to each other.  
  
“Oh yes, I'm a sentimental wreck. Anyway, Sigrun, I think we may be busy for long enough that keeping Vasiliy in Reykjavik is bad plan. We can always recall him from his hiding-place.” Switching into Icelandic, he addressed Perla directly. “How easy will it be for you to find a sheep farm’s address by the vague location and a name?”  
  
“Uh, probably pretty easy. Why?”  
  
“I’ve been led to believe they have a spare room and don’t read the news. So first, one of the names of the couple running the farm would be Árni - ”  
  
“Not Árni Hjálmarsson?” Einar piped up, looking surprised.  
  
“Is he near Akureyri?”  
  
“Oh, no, nowhere near there.”  
  
Mikkel opened his mouth to say that it was very unlikely to be the same Árni then, but Perla chipped in first. “Oh, Einar, you would not believe it! It’s actually that Árni’s son that took the statement they’re being weird about, would you ever have thought it was like him?”  
  
Einar just shrugged. “I haven't seen him nearly as recently as you. Anyway, even if nobody knows an Árni near Akureyri, we will find someone who knows.”  
  
“Árni Ragnarsson would be the one, I think?” The curly-headed man who’d been tailing Einar since they came in spoke up. Mikkel hadn’t caught his name yet, but he was one among the handful of Icelanders in this miniature legion. “My cousin’s wife was engaged to him, years ago. I think ah - Mikkel was your name, yes? - you’re right that he’s never read the news in his life.”  
  
“I can’t be sure.” Mikkel tried to remember if Reynir had ever mentioned his grandfather’s name. If he had, it hadn’t lodged in his memory.  
  
“Well it can’t be Árni Björnsson, because he will gossip for years about every mis-reported Reykjavik happening if you let him.” The man sounded extremely confident in his assessment of the sheep-farming Árnis near Akureyri, and Mikkel supposed he had to trust in the fact that if anything in this world was predictable, it was the ability of Icelanders to work out within minutes which of their countrymen your bare-details description referred to.  
  
“So you can find me Árni Ragnarsson.” Mikkel saw the man start to respond before Sigrun interrupted.  
  
“What’s the Icelandic chat about?”  
  
Mikkel switched back into Danish and started to explain that he’d found a plan that was, while somewhat of a rude exploitation of their old mutual friend, was both likely to mitigate harm and be just about bold enough to work. As he repeated the incidental part about the bad-faith police effort having a farming family related to it, he paused. Cogs were turning in his head, and they were finally moving into a position that produced a picture. He couldn't help but notice that this picture contained the Norwegian hills he’d seen being populated exclusively with Icelandic sheep for years, an immunity breakthrough that removed half the Rash-prevention overheads of keeping wandering livestock, and the continual Icelandic frustration with how hard Finns made it to monetise things. Finally connecting some dots, Mikkel felt suddenly far denser than he had in a very long time.  
  
“Mikkel?” Sigrun’s face formed a shape of concern as Mikkel went silent, placing a hand against his face in exasperation.  
  
“It’s the bloody sheep farmers. Of course we’re getting nowhere, they’ve got their fingers in everything!”  
  
The room went silent besides the continued low whispering of Tine and Einar translating. Sigrun’s look of confusion forced Mikkel to start elaborating. “Right, so something I should have gone into more detail about when I was mentioning running into Reynir by the docks...”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you read enough of my fics to recognise a few members of this legion of Norwegians, please take the first place you met them as an alternate timeline of the same "extended universe" :D
> 
> I've been trying to post as much as possible this weekend, as I fear the updates may get slower from now on. I'm starting a course which I'm told is 9-5 weekdays, and it's likely to be pretty mentally exhausting. On top of that I should be going shearing on the weekend, which will also be pretty tiring. It's a pity because I feel I'm finally hitting the flow of this story, I'll do my best to update when I can!


	11. Chapter 11

Sigrun had laughed extremely hard when her men finished making Vasiliy’s disguise. “Thor’s sweaty ballsack, that’s terrible! Now that I think about it, their beards do all kind of look like that, don’t they?”   
  
“This itches. And I think it does not work.” Vasiliy had been unimpressed by the donated Norwegian chest hairs glued to his chin, and seemed skeptical about this planned deception in general.   
  
“No, she’s right, it is a pretty convincing Finn costume. Your hat was already right, so just say _ai niin_ and _voi perkele!_ a lot and you’ll fool your average farmer Árni for sure.” Einar had helped, taking slightly too much joy in it, and had also been the one to remind Perla in the first place of the decaying stash of craft supplies some long-abandoned hobbies had left in here. Fixing one last slightly mismatched hair on Vasiliy’s chin, he proclaimed himself totally done.  
  
Vasiliy had been reassured that it was okay to remove this part of the disguise the moment he left the populated areas. It had not taken long for someone to run to an acquaintance down the road and find some plausible reason to get the exact address of Árni’s farm, nor for someone else to work out when the next transport towards Akureyri was. The explanation, planning and organisation stretched through the evening and past midnight. Mikkel could feel the effect of having stayed up till the small hours, but remained awake, waiting for the moment that Vasiliy would have to set off across town for the early carriage. Tine was just as nervous as Vasiliy was about the brazen-seeming prospect of putting him on public transport.   
  
“Surely someone will recognise him.” She was looking at Mikkel as though he’d absolutely lost his mind.   
  
“I’m sure they’ll know perfectly well they’ve never seen Lalli here in their life.” Mikkel gestured at Vasiliy. “Perhaps they’ll even be happy to give such an old friend of Reynir directions. I’m very sure that Reynir’s been chatty enough with everyone he knows to have mentioned him before. Honestly, Tine, I doubt anyone out there knows what a Russian accent sounds like...”  
  
“Aaaaugh!” Tine buried her face in her hands.   
  
Sigrun hadn’t known herself where exactly Vasiliy needed to be taken, and had delegated to some of the Icelanders under her command. “Einar, Dagur! You two take him to - BSÍ, was it? _Directly_ to BSÍ, mind, and get a ticket for him. And when he’s on his way you come back and report on how it went.” The order had been executed with only minimal grumbling about how this wasn’t how they’d planned to spend their shore leave.   
  
Once the pair had departed, the rest of Sigrun’s henchmen also made an exit, leaving just Sigrun there with Tine, Mikkel and Perla. Turning to Sigrun, Mikkel said “I do have to ask why you specified so firmly that they should take him directly to the station”.   
  
“You’re asking that _now_?” Tine still looked deeply uncomfortable with letting Vasiliy go again so soon after finding him. Mikkel wasn’t really sure what he could do about it, having already done his best to actually assure Vasiliy’s safety. If he made it to the countryside and was wise enough not to leave the immediate area around Reynir’s parents’ house, it seemed clear he was likely to be much safer than anywhere in Reykjavik.   
  
“It’s mostly that I wouldn’t put it past them to try to cheer him up by taking him to a bar or something.” Sigrun seemed nonchalant. “Hope Ginger doesn’t mind us using his place on false pretences to hide a fugitive. Seems a bit rude.”  
  
“Oh, it’s absolutely, heinously rude. I’m not sure we have a better option, though.” Mikkel yawned as he said it. It was gone four, and he supposed they’d be staying up until after Vasiliy’s 0500 departure and the return of his escort. “I do have to say though, in a sense, it’s far from the most illogical payback - ah, _compensation_ \- for carting him through Denmark for months.”  
  
“Hah!” Sigrun’s bark of laughter had Tine again looking between the two of them with renewed confusion.    
  
“Given we’re going to be waiting around for a while, do I finally get to know why you’ve met all these people?”   
  
“I’m kind of interested as well. It’s not like I have work in the morning.” Perla had gone to put on her pajamas shortly after the pack of men had left. She was leaning in the kitchen doorway, looking exhausted but rather unwilling to sleep while these people were still roaming around her flat.   
  
“Ah, well.” Mikkel sank into the couch. “It’s an extremely long story, but I suppose that given we have an hour I can sum it up.”  
  
Perla remained leaning against the door as Mikkel began explaining what the premise of their mission had been, interrupting briefly to say she did remember some small news item about this, a long time ago. Tine didn’t remember anything about it at all, and thinking about the fact she would have been all of fourteen at the time made Mikkel’s tired recollection of it all briefly stutter to a halt, although thankfully not for long enough to really stop the telling. She did sit up when she realised that two of the people who’d been on the mission were actually people she knew, going “oh!” at the penny dropped that the fake Finnish name Mikkel had suggested earlier referred to the exact same Lalli she’d met her first time in Finland.   
  
Hearing her “And his boyfriend was such a sweetie!”, then consequently feeling keenly aware that she had actually seen the two of them far more recently than he had, was also a bit much for four-thirty in the morning. Pondering on how the world was simultaneously so extremely large and extremely small, in time and distance, was never Mikkel’s favourite thing. Still, he got the story out in as dispassionate a way as he could. Perla said that this was the second old news story in the last couple of weeks that she’d heard a whole new side to, and that was more like commentary he could deal with.   
  
Tine continued to listen raptly and Sigrun dozed on the other side of the couch as Mikkel got through the last few details of the “how we all met” story. Perla leaned on her kitchen counter and stirred a hot drink with her eyes drooping. Finally, the faint sound of footsteps was heard in the building, the volume ticking up just before the noise turned into that of a key in the lock. Einar and his companion were back, yawning themselves. “Hey, do we have to give a detailed report on how getting Vasiliy out of town went, or is it enough to say he got on without removing the beard?”   
  
Sigrun jerked out of her doze. “Oof. You’re sure it was the right one?”   
  
“Absolutely. And he shouldn’t have to take his face out of the book we gave him till he reaches Akureyri.” Looking at Tine, Einar added "And I think everyone else there was still in the process of waking up, they won't be awake enough to look anyone else in the face until they've already forgotten he's there."   
  
“Good thinking, soldier! You’re dismissed.” Sigrun let her head fall back. “Mikkel, I guess we’ll be working on this more in the morning, or the afternoon, whenever we wake up.”  
  
“You should probably know she’s just basically announced she’s staying here tonight.” Mikkel said this in Icelandic to Perla before turning back to Sigrun. “Will we?”  
  
“Well, I’m not doing anything else with my” - Sigrun yawned again mid-sentence - “with my shore leave. Let’s fuck ‘em up, just gimme a few hours to sleep.” With the story he’d just told fresh in his mind, Mikkel recalled with an odd fondness that Sigrun’s motivation for going on that old mission had been the chance for a “holiday”. While she could clearly stand to work on her concept of holidaying, the fact you couldn’t fault her as a hard worker felt like a nugget of reliability in this bizarre situation. The use she’d be remained to be seen, but Mikkel allowed himself a moment of sentimentality over the fact she was so obviously going to try. It was five thirty in the morning, and that was allowed.   
  
“Well, see you.” The two soldiers departed, leaving Perla looking in resignation at the Norwegian captain propping her feet up on Mikkel and falling into a rapid sleep on the couch.   
  
“I don’t have spare beds for you all, but I’m not going to make you leave either.”   
  
“She did say to just give her a few hours, and I think that’s all I’ll take too, to be honest.” Mikkel’s own eyes felt extremely heavy now he was seriously considering the prospect of sleep. “Tine, will you be alright?”  
  
Perla looked like she was sizing up Tine for a moment. “I think we could top-and-tail, or just share normally if that’s fine with you. There’s about enough space and I’ve got another blanket.”   
  
“Mm-hmm, okay.” Now that the action for the night had been truly concluded, Tine also looked very abruptly like she was past caring where she slept. Mikkel never saw her get up off the floor, drifting off against the wall behind him within a minute of no longer needing to help.  
  
*********  
  
Sigríður popped her head back around the door of the kitchen. “Are you alright in there?” She couldn’t believe how bad this young man’s timing had been. Reynir had left only a couple of days ago, and surely this old friend of his had travelled quite a long way, although it was again escaping her mind exactly how long this journey might have been. Reynir had described it three times, but the information had never quite finished being conveyed, much less stuck in her mind. Everyone always said that it was a miracle she and Reynir managed to converse at all, endless laughs about how too much similarity could be a bad -  
  
Sigríður lost her train of thought when he spoke. “Yes, do not worry, everything is fine.” Lalli-Vasiliy had flour all over his hands and was currently filling a little circle of pastry with a finger-blended mix of diced onions and lamb mince. Sigríður realised she’d forgotten which of the names was the one she was meant to use. She’d always heard Reynir refer to his old friend by the first one, but she also thought she remembered her new guest saying it was “better to just call him Vasiliy”. What a strange nickname. Finland really was a mysterious place, maybe -   
  
“Where is the oil?”   
  
“Oh! Umm.” Sigríður visualised the physical steps she always took to find her cooking oil. “Behind the... bread bin, in the corner.” She watched as he retrieved the bottle, poured a lot of oil into a big pan, and began to heat it up. “What did you call these things you’re making, again?”  
  
“ _Chebureki_. My ba- my grandmother’s recipe.” He continued to manufacture the pastry things at a practised pace, folding the circle and pinching the edges together to contain the glob of mince. Sigríður had always been a bit suspicious of foreign cuisine, but these Finnish pastries looked like they might be alright. Nothing like a nice helping of good plain skyr, of course, but she’d brave it. Hopefully the taste of his cooking wouldn't be as “special” as his Icelandic.   
  
“Well do let me know if you need help!” Sigríður retreated again, feeling a little sad that her fussing was being so continually rebuffed. She had thought she was remembering very well when she offered an extra blanket - bits of Finland were definitely south of here, or so she recalled hearing, and coming from a land where there were palm trees would make Iceland seem very cold. Maybe him turning it down had just been an attempt to be an easy guest. He did seem like a nice boy, and she couldn’t fault his cooking even if his table manners were a bit strange and overbearing. The hints at having been raised by his grandma made her just a shade sadder about the fuss-rebuffing. Sigríður privately hoped that not all Finnish boys were this nice. She did want her Reynir to come home at some point.   


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cultural notes on the last couple of chapters:
> 
> Some readers have seemed surprised that a group of people would be able to work out exactly who you meant, referring to someone on the other side of the country by only a few bare details, within two minutes. Those familiar with the culture of Iceland are more likely to be surprised it took them that long.
> 
> Reynir's mum is a bit miffed by Vasiliy's table manners because in Russia it's normal and polite to fill the drinks of those around you, whereas people in the north are quite put out by someone touching their stuff and controlling their portions while they're trying to eat and drink. I've had the experience of watching a 50-50 group of French people and rural Finns eating dinner together, and watching the Finns try to express their quietly aghast reaction to the French dining custom - that is, putting other people's food on their plate for them - was one of the funniest moments of cross-cultural misunderstanding I've ever seen.


End file.
